Well the ultimate draconian approach would be no access to state run services, benefits, pensions etc without vaccination.
I imagine what they will go with is making life just a pain in the arse if you aren't plus not being able to access leisure, bars, restaurants etc. The Italians are already very good at making life a pain in the arse if you need to apply for anything. No vaccination, you can't renew your passport, your driving licence, your car tax, without add loads of extra steps e.g. unvaccinated can only do it every 3rd Thursday of every 3rd month....
Or they could go down the route of you get added tax / fine every year you don't.
That first has been the situation in Italy for some time, ex that a recent negative test can stand for a vaccination. Presumably they just remove the ability to get a ‘Green Pass’ with a test.
Was it Singapore where you could either get vaccinated or *pay* for a test every day? And the tests weren't cheap IIRC
Something similar out here. If you work in the public sector or in a customer-facing job, you need a PCR test every 72 hours if you’re not vaccinated. $40 a pop, which is pretty much your whole disposable income if you work in a shop or hotel.
Hmmm. History.
So pass a law that you can either be vaccinated or have to use an NHS approved test per day. Cost £50.
Fines under the Recusancy laws once made up a substantial proportion of state income...
They’ve also banned unvaccinated citizens from overseas travel, and I expect they’ll soon require vaccination for expat visa renewals, as Singapore has done already.
The way I’d do it in the UK, is an NI surcharge of 5%, which raises a lot of money but is cheap to administer, and for arrivals in the country to either produce vaccination papers or have a week’s institutional quarantine at their own expense.
I strongly dislike restrictions on eg. bars and sporting events, which inconvenience everyone including small businesses.
It wouldn't be cheap to administer - updating the software to have the appropriate flag is a 7 month project (see the NI changes announced back in September).
Which reminds me I must check if the new XML RTI files are out.
Surely, status =1 is normal NI rate, status=0 is over 65 or under 16, and new status=2 has the 5% uplift? The first two of these exist already, but knowing government databases it’s probably a true/false flag.
Do it with tax code then. Anyone unvaccinated has tax code 0, no personal allowance.
Tax code would work until you earnt over £100,000 at which point it had no impact.
Regular private PCR tests in person (stated offices so the witness doesn't visit you) would be my preferred approach.
But then again I've seen enough payroll software now to be biased towards - it's all hacksville (well utterly beyond that in most cases).
I'm not saying they are stupid as was suggested. They are being gaslit on an epic scale by their media. But Biden DID win the election. Massively. Fairly. Demonstrably. That they still don't believe it is bonkers.
So I think the film got it pitch perfect. Here is something undeniably true. Just look at it. No, its a fake, don't look at it.
57% of Americans think a repeat attempted coup is likely to occur again. Perhaps the Canadian professor was right and the land of the Maple leaf needs to start preparing for refugees fleeing Gilead...
Time is running out for America. I see no sign of any acceptance of the urgency of the situation. Plenty of op-eds in NY Times warning about 2024, but nothing seems to happen.
I agree. The failure to prosecute, convict and jail those responsible for the insurrection attempted a year ago today (as opposed to the stupid foot soldiers) shows the republic to be extremely vulnerable.
By coincidence one of my Christmas presents was Harris's Cicero trilogy. The similarities, with the gradual destruction of rules, standards and precedents that protected the republic from the strong men are stark.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
I am afraid that this response is an almost perfect example of the phenomenon I am describing.
The events you refer to were investigated and have been through the courts, due to the work of historians (possible in an open, progressive society like the UK with independent institutions), with significant amounts of comphensation being paid to the survivors, in 2013 - 9 years ago.
Even then, the repression of the Mau Maus is just one part of the very messy history of colonialism which, as I have said, the UK has ultimately rejected as a tool of development. Any historical appraisal of empire in Kenya or anywhere else would need to look at many, many other things. Otherwise you are just selecting events that reinforce the narrative that you like, which is the antithesis of the historians search for objectivity.
It is a peculiar feature of human nature that people seek to be concerned about what they can control, and feel helpless about what they cannot, the latter leading to denial. So it is with this. People feel that they can do something about the 'historic crimes of colonialism', but they know that they can do nothing about actual genocide and slavery going on now in certain parts of the world.
Well the ultimate draconian approach would be no access to state run services, benefits, pensions etc without vaccination.
I imagine what they will go with is making life just a pain in the arse if you aren't plus not being able to access leisure, bars, restaurants etc. The Italians are already very good at making life a pain in the arse if you need to apply for anything. No vaccination, you can't renew your passport, your driving licence, your car tax, without add loads of extra steps e.g. unvaccinated can only do it every 3rd Thursday of every 3rd month....
Or they could go down the route of you get added tax / fine every year you don't.
That first has been the situation in Italy for some time, ex that a recent negative test can stand for a vaccination. Presumably they just remove the ability to get a ‘Green Pass’ with a test.
Was it Singapore where you could either get vaccinated or *pay* for a test every day? And the tests weren't cheap IIRC
Something similar out here. If you work in the public sector or in a customer-facing job, you need a PCR test every 72 hours if you’re not vaccinated. $40 a pop, which is pretty much your whole disposable income if you work in a shop or hotel.
Hmmm. History.
So pass a law that you can either be vaccinated or have to use an NHS approved test per day. Cost £50.
Fines under the Recusancy laws once made up a substantial proportion of state income...
Or have the dragoons billeted on you for free.
Not every home has car parking. Where will the dragoons park their Covenanters?
On the front garden, obvs.
What about mews houses (no private space outside the front door)? Flats with no parking space?
I force angry arguments at the local NCP carpark with badly parked tanks everywhere.
Time is running out for America. I see no sign of any acceptance of the urgency of the situation. Plenty of op-eds in NY Times warning about 2024, but nothing seems to happen.
Jan 6 was the start not the end and these people who think everything will be alright if Trump just has an actuarially unlikely heart attack are deluding themselves. He was just a moronic fucking boomer who stumbled on to something by accident.
The number one foreign policy goal of the British government should be to build strategic independence from the US against the day of its very ugly and chaotic disintegration.
Boris Johnson is playing such a dangerous game. The right wing press, whose journalists have private health care insurance, love it. But the NHS is close to on its knees now.
Letting this rip may be beloved of the cull-set but for most of us who have a heart and soul we're now gambling with many lives.
Holland will show in the coming weeks whether a lockdown makes any difference to the spread of Omicron. My guess is that it will not.
Mr. Z, the prism of ideology naturally distorts and colours any view of the past.
I saw a video recently from a Youtube channel I previously liked describing the medieval peasant working habits (different for men and women) as being down to 'outdated gender stereotypes'. Sure... just ignore the biological reality.
Mr. Carnyx, adding to history as new evidence emerges is not only fine, but necessary. Bastardising it to fit in with modern day political ideologies is quite the opposite.
No problem with that. People do of course come up with different ideas because of their personal approaches. I'm sure Mr Johnson would be more likely to want to write a book on how great Mr Churchill was, for instance, as opposed to one denouncing him as a racist warmonger. But they have to be prepared to back them up with evidence and argument, and not ignore other evidence.
Novax is staying in Oz pending a full federal hearing on Monday
Assuming there’s been no technical error on the Australian side, I don’t see how they can back down politically
Which is presumably his argument - that this is a politically-motivated decision in an election year, and not in accordance with the law as is written.
I don’t know what the requirements are for a visa, but the politicians only got involved after he was stopped at the border, so presumably some doubt from the get go
Boris Johnson is playing such a dangerous game. The right wing press, whose journalists have private health care insurance, love it. But the NHS is close to on its knees now.
Letting this rip may be beloved of the cull-set but for most of us who have a heart and soul we're now gambling with many lives.
There seems to be two schools of thought. The internet virology experts who are clear that there is no death wave therefore no crisis therefore drop all restrictions (cf Steve Baker yesterday), and the actual NHS medics and managers looking at actual data in actual hospital watching the tide lap the top of the wall with exhausted staff running out of sandbags.
The NHS Providers guy quoted trusts modelling 130% hospitalisation vs the previous high, despite Omicron "just being a cold. Would be helpful if we actually recognised these facts and worked on supporting the NHS instead of denouncing the facts as ideologically inconvenient.
*) Those who, for whatever reason, choose not to get vaccinated but don't spread antivax propaganda. *) Those who actively are unvaccinated, and gleefully spread antivax propaganda.
Both types are problematic, but the latter group are those who really need targeting. One of the latter group is a parent at my son's school, and he is often spreading antivax propaganda over the village's FB page. He seems to take a manic glee in the arguments it causes - although he doesn't seem to realise that many people don't see TikTok as a valid source of information.
The solution there is to become a moderator on the village's FB page and ban him.
We actually have two pages: the original one, and a later one that has 'uncensored' after it. You can guess why that developed.
I'm not saying they are stupid as was suggested. They are being gaslit on an epic scale by their media. But Biden DID win the election. Massively. Fairly. Demonstrably. That they still don't believe it is bonkers.
So I think the film got it pitch perfect. Here is something undeniably true. Just look at it. No, its a fake, don't look at it.
57% of Americans think a repeat attempted coup is likely to occur again. Perhaps the Canadian professor was right and the land of the Maple leaf needs to start preparing for refugees fleeing Gilead...
Time is running out for America. I see no sign of any acceptance of the urgency of the situation. Plenty of op-eds in NY Times warning about 2024, but nothing seems to happen.
I know that I am happily quoting pop culture by warning of Gilead. And the book was written in the 80s so its not contemporary. But the notion of it IS absolutely bang up to date. That new Texas law allowing men to shop womenfolk for cash for their crimes of seeking an abortion is straight out of Gilead.
We know that a significant number of Americans have been persuaded to Don't Look Up, that there was no coup, that the election was stolen. If they can be manipulated to believe things they witnessed to have not happened then they can be manipulated to believe anything.
There isn't an obvious USA/CSA border split this time is there?
North East plus the lakes (including Chicago, Minnesota, etc) is one country
Well the ultimate draconian approach would be no access to state run services, benefits, pensions etc without vaccination.
I imagine what they will go with is making life just a pain in the arse if you aren't plus not being able to access leisure, bars, restaurants etc. The Italians are already very good at making life a pain in the arse if you need to apply for anything. No vaccination, you can't renew your passport, your driving licence, your car tax, without add loads of extra steps e.g. unvaccinated can only do it every 3rd Thursday of every 3rd month....
Or they could go down the route of you get added tax / fine every year you don't.
That first has been the situation in Italy for some time, ex that a recent negative test can stand for a vaccination. Presumably they just remove the ability to get a ‘Green Pass’ with a test.
Was it Singapore where you could either get vaccinated or *pay* for a test every day? And the tests weren't cheap IIRC
Something similar out here. If you work in the public sector or in a customer-facing job, you need a PCR test every 72 hours if you’re not vaccinated. $40 a pop, which is pretty much your whole disposable income if you work in a shop or hotel.
Hmmm. History.
So pass a law that you can either be vaccinated or have to use an NHS approved test per day. Cost £50.
Fines under the Recusancy laws once made up a substantial proportion of state income...
Or have the dragoons billeted on you for free.
Not every home has car parking. Where will the dragoons park their Covenanters?
On the front garden, obvs.
What about mews houses (no private space outside the front door)? Flats with no parking space?
I force angry arguments at the local NCP carpark with badly parked tanks everywhere.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
I'm probably the most pro vaccine person on this board, if not the world, but even I object to mandatory vaccinations.
I am in favour of making the lives of the non medically exempt unvaccinated hell though.
No benefits for them, ban them from public transport, cinemas, theatres, restaurants, gigs, leaving the country, supermarkets, owning cars etc.
Heck, even deny them the vote.
What you are advocating is the setting up of a inferior class of person because they have made a particular legal choice.
You are putting the cart before the horse. You cannot in a liberal democracy demand these things unless vaccination is firstly made mandatory. Otherwise this would be taking away rights from a cohort of people who had done nothing illegal.
Up to then, individuals who make their own choices within the law are entitled to protection against the views you espouse.
I agree that the concept that a Government is too weak to ban people doing something but they will adopt administrative measures to make it almost impossible is simply bad government and can lead to no end of manipulation. If Fred Bloggs bends the benefit rules to suit himself we all take a dim view; it shouldn't become an instrument of government. That said, I'm not sure there's a human right to walk into restaurants and cinemas cheerfully infecting people.
We really can't actually vaccinate people by force (soldiers breaking in and holding them down??). Making it mandatory (except for medical exemptions) with any number of restrictions on use of public and private property without evidence of vaccination would be legal. If someone wants to refuse vaccination without a medical reason but simply stays at home or goes for walks on their own, that's fine. But that is a vaxports policy, and I think the Government is simply too weak to get it through.
I'm not saying they are stupid as was suggested. They are being gaslit on an epic scale by their media. But Biden DID win the election. Massively. Fairly. Demonstrably. That they still don't believe it is bonkers.
So I think the film got it pitch perfect. Here is something undeniably true. Just look at it. No, its a fake, don't look at it.
57% of Americans think a repeat attempted coup is likely to occur again. Perhaps the Canadian professor was right and the land of the Maple leaf needs to start preparing for refugees fleeing Gilead...
Trump may actually win the election fair and square and even win the popular vote in 2024.
Latest poll is Trump 44% Biden 38% with 8% of Biden 2020 voters now backing Trump
But all the polls show that both Biden and Trump are unpopular, and three quarters of Americans don't want another match between them.
By the way, the last line of the header has an unintentional double negative.
I didn't see any head to head numbers there and the Redfield poll was taken after that Yahoo poll. Note too even with Yahoo Trump has more support from Republicans than Biden does from Democrats
I'm not saying they are stupid as was suggested. They are being gaslit on an epic scale by their media. But Biden DID win the election. Massively. Fairly. Demonstrably. That they still don't believe it is bonkers.
So I think the film got it pitch perfect. Here is something undeniably true. Just look at it. No, its a fake, don't look at it.
57% of Americans think a repeat attempted coup is likely to occur again. Perhaps the Canadian professor was right and the land of the Maple leaf needs to start preparing for refugees fleeing Gilead...
Time is running out for America. I see no sign of any acceptance of the urgency of the situation. Plenty of op-eds in NY Times warning about 2024, but nothing seems to happen.
I agree. The failure to prosecute, convict and jail those responsible for the insurrection attempted a year ago today (as opposed to the stupid foot soldiers) shows the republic to be extremely vulnerable.
By coincidence one of my Christmas presents was Harris's Cicero trilogy. The similarities, with the gradual destruction of rules, standards and precedents that protected the republic from the strong men are stark.
There was a very interesting news piece on that subject a couple of weeks ago, which if it wasn’t from a good source I would have dismissed as a conspiracy theory.
It appears that many of the ringleaders at the Capitol, who are clearly identifiable from photos and videos, haven’t been charged with any offences. Those who have been charged are, as you suggest, mostly the foot soldiers.
The suggestion is that the significant numbers of the ringleaders were either informers or FBI, which is apparently something with a rich history, in a country where entrapment laws don’t seem to apply as they do in the UK.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
Some examples of people who "want to forget about the Barbary Trade" etc?
It's an interesting discussion. Where I live (Cologne) within a few metres of my door I walk over a Stolperstein https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein small brass plaques set in the pavement that just say "here lived" with a name and a date. There are loads of them around the city, they started in Cologne in 1992 and have spread across Germany and beyond. I think they are a good way of remembering victims of Nazism, a lot of the time I don't notice them (any more) as I walk around the neighbourhood, the city, but every now and then I see them and stop and catch my breath.
The AfD and others really don't like them, and they use similar arguments - we should be proud of the many good things in German history, we shouldn't feel guilty about what previous generations did, what about all the other terrible things that other people did, Germany should be confident and not crippled with guilt, the people putting these plaques there are unpatriotic anti-German etc etc.
Boris Johnson is playing such a dangerous game. The right wing press, whose journalists have private health care insurance, love it. But the NHS is close to on its knees now.
Letting this rip may be beloved of the cull-set but for most of us who have a heart and soul we're now gambling with many lives.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
What was one of the interesting things about that discussion of the Colston statue last night was the argument that it was an active act of denial of history in order to titivate Colston's image ('whitewash' would be an unfortunate but perhaps apt expression). The late C19 erectors would certainly qualify as "people who continually do [history] down and seek to relitigate historic sins". As, for example, were the moral warriors of the C19 who tried to prevent Burns's statues on the grounds of his infidelity and immorality. Statue wars are nothing new, and anyone who tries to set history in aspic, or rather in marble and bronze, is in denial of history.
Whilst I agree with most of that throwing a public statue into the harbour is still criminal damage and not the way to resolve these issues. The jury was wrong and the senior counsel representing the accused was dangerously irresponsible. The rule of law is important and is of particular importance in the protection of the vulnerable and exploited in our society.
AIUI English juries are always right, corruption and similar events aside. By definition and by law.
I don't think Mr Colston's avatar was 'vulnerable and exploited' in that social sense at least, and neither are the Merchant Venturers of Bristol. What actually puzzles me, now I think aboutt it some more, is how they even had a locus in the matter of the plaque to be placed on the statue - unfortunate as it worked so obviously to obstruct progress and prevent the head of political steam from not building up and exploding. What right did they have any more than any other Bristol organization or citizen, to block the actions of the elected mayor?
The senior counsel for the accused described this as "a cancer in their society that needed to be plucked out" and urged the jury to be on the right side of history. At the risk of incurring the wrath of Godwin so early in the day many people in many societies have felt that about Jews or other minorities. The rule of law does not contemplate choosing what laws you feel like supporting on a particular day.
Time is running out for America. I see no sign of any acceptance of the urgency of the situation. Plenty of op-eds in NY Times warning about 2024, but nothing seems to happen.
Jan 6 was the start not the end and these people who think everything will be alright if Trump just has an actuarially unlikely heart attack are deluding themselves. He was just a moronic fucking boomer who stumbled on to something by accident.
The number one foreign policy goal of the British government should be to build strategic independence from the US against the day of its very ugly and chaotic disintegration.
What about the F-35 support, maintenance and software?
I'm probably the most pro vaccine person on this board, if not the world, but even I object to mandatory vaccinations.
I am in favour of making the lives of the non medically exempt unvaccinated hell though.
No benefits for them, ban them from public transport, cinemas, theatres, restaurants, gigs, leaving the country, supermarkets, owning cars etc.
Heck, even deny them the vote.
So they only have freedom if they do what you tell them to?
No, it's like I cannot go to certain parts of the world without having certain vaccines, this is merely an extension of that.
I am sick and tired of the unvaxxed twats clogging up the NHS and causing people with heart attacks and cancer not getting the treatment they need.
They are destroying the economy and companies thanks to their selfishness.
Their actions are legal. You are imposing restrictions on their freedom in conscience - forcing them to undergo a medical procedure unless they wish to be treated as inferior.
A citizens’ rights are fundamental. The government does not have the right to strip those away lightly
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
Some examples of people who "want to forget about the Barbary Trade" etc?
It's an interesting discussion. Where I live (Cologne) within a few metres of my door I walk over a Stolperstein https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein small brass plaques set in the pavement that just say "here lived" with a name and a date. There are loads of them around the city, they started in Cologne in 1992 and have spread across Germany and beyond. I think they are a good way of remembering victims of Nazism, a lot of the time I don't notice them (any more) as I walk around the neighbourhood, the city, but every now and then I see them and stop and catch my breath.
The AfD and others really don't like them, and they use similar arguments - we should be proud of the many good things in German history, we shouldn't feel guilty about what previous generations did, what about all the other terrible things that other people did, Germany should be confident and not crippled with guilt, the people putting these plaques there are unpatriotic anti-German etc etc.
I like the Stolperstein - though I would go for stainless steel (longer lasting with lower maintenance) and install them on a wall, if possible, to get round the whole stepping-on-issue. something like the plaques in Paris?
When I attended a course (work provided) on... modern behaviour?... the lecturer included a section on Bad Facts.
These are things, which while true, are actually racist to bring up. Non-white involvement in the slave trade was a bullet point in the example list. Apparently only racists mention it to try and bring non-white people down.
Boris Johnson is playing such a dangerous game. The right wing press, whose journalists have private health care insurance, love it. But the NHS is close to on its knees now.
Letting this rip may be beloved of the cull-set but for most of us who have a heart and soul we're now gambling with many lives.
Except the NHS leadership don’t agree with you
And the "game" is to find the correct balance between controlling the spread of the virus sufficiently so that the NHS can cope whilst doing the least possible damage to an already seriously damaged economy. Its tricky, to say the least.
Novax is staying in Oz pending a full federal hearing on Monday
Assuming there’s been no technical error on the Australian side, I don’t see how they can back down politically
Which is presumably his argument - that this is a politically-motivated decision in an election year, and not in accordance with the law as is written.
I don’t know what the requirements are for a visa, but the politicians only got involved after he was stopped at the border, so presumably some doubt from the get go
The timeline I saw, has him boasting on social media about getting an exemption - which were done anonymously by civil servants - before he turned up in Australia. The politicians intervened once he did show up there, given he’s been spouting anti-vax propoganda for a year or more.
Boris Johnson is playing such a dangerous game. The right wing press, whose journalists have private health care insurance, love it. But the NHS is close to on its knees now.
Letting this rip may be beloved of the cull-set but for most of us who have a heart and soul we're now gambling with many lives.
Except the NHS leadership don’t agree with you
Nor, increasingly, extreme right wing papers like the Guardian.
Well the ultimate draconian approach would be no access to state run services, benefits, pensions etc without vaccination.
I imagine what they will go with is making life just a pain in the arse if you aren't plus not being able to access leisure, bars, restaurants etc. The Italians are already very good at making life a pain in the arse if you need to apply for anything. No vaccination, you can't renew your passport, your driving licence, your car tax, without add loads of extra steps e.g. unvaccinated can only do it every 3rd Thursday of every 3rd month....
Or they could go down the route of you get added tax / fine every year you don't.
That first has been the situation in Italy for some time, ex that a recent negative test can stand for a vaccination. Presumably they just remove the ability to get a ‘Green Pass’ with a test.
Was it Singapore where you could either get vaccinated or *pay* for a test every day? And the tests weren't cheap IIRC
Something similar out here. If you work in the public sector or in a customer-facing job, you need a PCR test every 72 hours if you’re not vaccinated. $40 a pop, which is pretty much your whole disposable income if you work in a shop or hotel.
Hmmm. History.
So pass a law that you can either be vaccinated or have to use an NHS approved test per day. Cost £50.
Fines under the Recusancy laws once made up a substantial proportion of state income...
They’ve also banned unvaccinated citizens from overseas travel, and I expect they’ll soon require vaccination for expat visa renewals, as Singapore has done already.
The way I’d do it in the UK, is an NI surcharge of 5%, which raises a lot of money but is cheap to administer, and for arrivals in the country to either produce vaccination papers or have a week’s institutional quarantine at their own expense.
I strongly dislike restrictions on eg. bars and sporting events, which inconvenience everyone including small businesses.
It wouldn't be cheap to administer - updating the software to have the appropriate flag is a 7 month project (see the NI changes announced back in September).
Which reminds me I must check if the new XML RTI files are out.
Surely, status =1 is normal NI rate, status=0 is over 65 or under 16, and new status=2 has the 5% uplift? The first two of these exist already, but knowing government databases it’s probably a true/false flag.
Do it with tax code then. Anyone unvaccinated has tax code 0, no personal allowance.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
Respectfully, that is nonsense. The people who have no confidence in Britain are the ones who think the country will collapse if we examine and criticise aspects of its past behaviour. The fact is that we achieved great wealth in large part via enthusiastic participation in a huge crime (getting rich by forcing others to work for free on pain of death is fairly parasitic I think you would agree). I don't think that the chief architects of that crime should continue to be honoured, especially as our future as a country rests on every one of its citizens, including millions of descendents of slaves, feeling like they have a stake in it. In my opinion it is the statue shaggers who lack any coherent vision of the future - they want us to worship the past without understanding it, and celebrate who we were not who we are or who we could become.
The issue is that the statute destroyers went outside the democratic process. It had been discussed. The local population (IIRC) was divided but wanted to retain it. There was a compromise of a detailed plaque although the wording was challenging to reach a consensus on.
And then a group of people decided that the democratic process wasn’t important.
(As an aside, the way they have left it damaged and on its side in a museum is an interesting and thoughtful response.)
That's a very partial reading of the situation. The Colston culters were essentially blocking any plaque with an accurate account of what Colston had done, preventing a resolution of the issue for years. I would have preferred to see the issue resolved in a different way, but I think the eventual outcome - Colston in a museum, lying in his back with BLM written across his chest in red letters, is the ideal one. And the fact that he was thrown into the waters of one of Britain's largest slave ports along the way isn't something I'm going to get too upset about. I am much more concerned about violence against people than against inanimate objects - having a heavier sentence for damaging a statue than for rape, for instance, is insane.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
What was one of the interesting things about that discussion of the Colston statue last night was the argument that it was an active act of denial of history in order to titivate Colston's image ('whitewash' would be an unfortunate but perhaps apt expression). The late C19 erectors would certainly qualify as "people who continually do [history] down and seek to relitigate historic sins". As, for example, were the moral warriors of the C19 who tried to prevent Burns's statues on the grounds of his infidelity and immorality. Statue wars are nothing new, and anyone who tries to set history in aspic, or rather in marble and bronze, is in denial of history.
Whilst I agree with most of that throwing a public statue into the harbour is still criminal damage and not the way to resolve these issues. The jury was wrong and the senior counsel representing the accused was dangerously irresponsible. The rule of law is important and is of particular importance in the protection of the vulnerable and exploited in our society.
AIUI English juries are always right, corruption and similar events aside. By definition and by law.
I don't think Mr Colston's avatar was 'vulnerable and exploited' in that social sense at least, and neither are the Merchant Venturers of Bristol. What actually puzzles me, now I think aboutt it some more, is how they even had a locus in the matter of the plaque to be placed on the statue - unfortunate as it worked so obviously to obstruct progress and prevent the head of political steam from not building up and exploding. What right did they have any more than any other Bristol organization or citizen, to block the actions of the elected mayor?
I thought they wanted the plaque and it was the anti-statue people who kept rejecting any form of words?
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
What was one of the interesting things about that discussion of the Colston statue last night was the argument that it was an active act of denial of history in order to titivate Colston's image ('whitewash' would be an unfortunate but perhaps apt expression). The late C19 erectors would certainly qualify as "people who continually do [history] down and seek to relitigate historic sins". As, for example, were the moral warriors of the C19 who tried to prevent Burns's statues on the grounds of his infidelity and immorality. Statue wars are nothing new, and anyone who tries to set history in aspic, or rather in marble and bronze, is in denial of history.
Whilst I agree with most of that throwing a public statue into the harbour is still criminal damage and not the way to resolve these issues. The jury was wrong and the senior counsel representing the accused was dangerously irresponsible. The rule of law is important and is of particular importance in the protection of the vulnerable and exploited in our society.
People have a right to decide who should be venerated in their home town. A slave trader isn't one of them.
I also note the sheer hypocrisy of those getting agitated about this verdict who were all-too-happy to throw their support behind those who overthrew Ceaucescu or the protestors in Tiannamen Square.
Libertarians love the overthrow of oppression until it comes to their turn.
Your first sentence is exactly right. But that's people as a whole. If the majority of the city wants rid of a statue, it will be removed. Local democracy is slow and imperfect, but it works. Four hothead can't be allowed to unilaterally decide they represent a city's opinion, even if on this particular subject, they do. Getting the right result by means of the wrong process is the wrong result. Process is important. There is a statue in my home town of James Prescott Joule. If I decided I didn't like physics, what's to stop me pulling it down with the argument 'people have a right to decide who ought to be venerated in their home town'?
I'm not saying they are stupid as was suggested. They are being gaslit on an epic scale by their media. But Biden DID win the election. Massively. Fairly. Demonstrably. That they still don't believe it is bonkers.
So I think the film got it pitch perfect. Here is something undeniably true. Just look at it. No, its a fake, don't look at it.
57% of Americans think a repeat attempted coup is likely to occur again. Perhaps the Canadian professor was right and the land of the Maple leaf needs to start preparing for refugees fleeing Gilead...
Time is running out for America. I see no sign of any acceptance of the urgency of the situation. Plenty of op-eds in NY Times warning about 2024, but nothing seems to happen.
I agree. The failure to prosecute, convict and jail those responsible for the insurrection attempted a year ago today (as opposed to the stupid foot soldiers) shows the republic to be extremely vulnerable.
By coincidence one of my Christmas presents was Harris's Cicero trilogy. The similarities, with the gradual destruction of rules, standards and precedents that protected the republic from the strong men are stark.
There was a very interesting news piece on that subject a couple of weeks ago, which if it wasn’t from a good source I would have dismissed as a conspiracy theory.
It appears that many of the ringleaders at the Capitol, who are clearly identifiable from photos and videos, haven’t been charged with any offences. Those who have been charged are, as you suggest, mostly the foot soldiers.
The suggestion is that the significant numbers of the ringleaders were either informers or FBI, which is apparently something with a rich history, in a country where entrapment laws don’t seem to apply as they do in the UK.
57% of abstainers are planning on voting Labour next time round. I’ll believe it when I see it. DNVs rarely change their habits. Mind you, when they do, the results can be spectacular.
How are 2019 DNVs planning on voting next time:
Lab 57% Con 20% LD 8% Grn 6% Refuk 6% Will not vote, again 4%
In this particular case it deserves some credibility. I met lots of Labour supporters who said they didn't feel they could vote for Corbyn but they certainly wouldb't vote for anyone else. That's a quite different cohort from the usual can't-be-arsed DNV.
Time is running out for America. I see no sign of any acceptance of the urgency of the situation. Plenty of op-eds in NY Times warning about 2024, but nothing seems to happen.
Jan 6 was the start not the end and these people who think everything will be alright if Trump just has an actuarially unlikely heart attack are deluding themselves. He was just a moronic fucking boomer who stumbled on to something by accident.
The number one foreign policy goal of the British government should be to build strategic independence from the US against the day of its very ugly and chaotic disintegration.
15% of Democrats and 20% of Republicans would be happy if there was significant loss of life amongst the other side. Not much difference.
Yet, this is presented as a one-sided issue. Guess what? The Democrats try to steal elections. It might not be a raging mob outside the Capitol but they use their soft power equivalent, which is the media telling us for years post-2016 that Trump was an illegitimate President and a Russian spy, and with Hillary saying even before 2020 that the election was stolen from her. Oh, and don't fucking mention Stacey Abrams who also gets away with still claiming she won the Georgia Governor election.
If you want to genuinely solve the problem, instead of virtual signalling, then you can start by recognising this is a two sided problem, not just one.
I'm probably the most pro vaccine person on this board, if not the world, but even I object to mandatory vaccinations.
I am in favour of making the lives of the non medically exempt unvaccinated hell though.
No benefits for them, ban them from public transport, cinemas, theatres, restaurants, gigs, leaving the country, supermarkets, owning cars etc.
Heck, even deny them the vote.
What you are advocating is the setting up of a inferior class of person because they have made a particular legal choice.
You are putting the cart before the horse. You cannot in a liberal democracy demand these things unless vaccination is firstly made mandatory. Otherwise this would be taking away rights from a cohort of people who had done nothing illegal.
Up to then, individuals who make their own choices within the law are entitled to protection against the views you espouse.
I agree that the concept that a Government is too weak to ban people doing something but they will adopt administrative measures to make it almost impossible is simply bad government and can lead to no end of manipulation. If Fred Bloggs bends the benefit rules to suit himself we all take a dim view; it shouldn't become an instrument of government. That said, I'm not sure there's a human right to walk into restaurants and cinemas cheerfully infecting people.
We really can't actually vaccinate people by force (soldiers breaking in and holding them down??). Making it mandatory (except for medical exemptions) with any number of restrictions on use of public and private property without evidence of vaccination would be legal. If someone wants to refuse vaccination without a medical reason but simply stays at home or goes for walks on their own, that's fine. But that is a vaxports policy, and I think the Government is simply too weak to get it through.
I assume you are joking when you suggest that people are walking into restaurants and cinemas cheerfully infecting people. The seek to blame is very regrettable IMO. Infection isn't imprinted with details of the particular person you get the virus from and there is no nefarious intent here in any case.
The foe is the virus not its particular host.
The narrative that has developed is that vaccinated people are safe and unvaccinated are a danger. It is conveniently being forgotten that vaccinated people transmit too. Not sure what the latest science is on the relative transmissibility of the two groups.
The future we should be aiming for - fast - is one where we rub shoulders with everyone again, without firstly seeking to establish, demonise and avoid people for making a legal choice.
Edit: In addition to the above, Omicron may very well mean that this pandemic becomes in the past without having to demonise people. Vaccination was always going to have refuseniks and in the end I suspect they will not matter. I predicted 15%-20% would refuse before vaccinations were developed. In the event it was much less. The promise of normality was not contingent on 100% take up - which would have been ridiculous.
Time is running out for America. I see no sign of any acceptance of the urgency of the situation. Plenty of op-eds in NY Times warning about 2024, but nothing seems to happen.
Jan 6 was the start not the end and these people who think everything will be alright if Trump just has an actuarially unlikely heart attack are deluding themselves. He was just a moronic fucking boomer who stumbled on to something by accident.
The number one foreign policy goal of the British government should be to build strategic independence from the US against the day of its very ugly and chaotic disintegration.
What about the F-35 support, maintenance and software?
The Israelis operate their F-35 Adirs outside the ALIS/ODIN system and they are going to need all the friends they can get.
F135 engine maintenance and test is in the Netherlands and MRO&U is done in Italy.
Novax is staying in Oz pending a full federal hearing on Monday
Assuming there’s been no technical error on the Australian side, I don’t see how they can back down politically
Which is presumably his argument - that this is a politically-motivated decision in an election year, and not in accordance with the law as is written.
I don’t know what the requirements are for a visa, but the politicians only got involved after he was stopped at the border, so presumably some doubt from the get go
The timeline I saw, has him boasting on social media about getting an exemption - which were done anonymously by civil servants - before he turned up in Australia. The politicians intervened once he did show up there, given he’s been spouting anti-vax propoganda for a year or more.
I think it was a case of
- He's anti vax - His tame doctors built him a medical excuse to get around quarantine - This was accepted on face value, initially, by the front-end types in Australia - partly because the medical justification would have been looked legit and partly because he was a high status visitor. - He started taking the piss on social media - This bumped it to the attention of the politicians who called the management types in immigration.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
What was one of the interesting things about that discussion of the Colston statue last night was the argument that it was an active act of denial of history in order to titivate Colston's image ('whitewash' would be an unfortunate but perhaps apt expression). The late C19 erectors would certainly qualify as "people who continually do [history] down and seek to relitigate historic sins". As, for example, were the moral warriors of the C19 who tried to prevent Burns's statues on the grounds of his infidelity and immorality. Statue wars are nothing new, and anyone who tries to set history in aspic, or rather in marble and bronze, is in denial of history.
Whilst I agree with most of that throwing a public statue into the harbour is still criminal damage and not the way to resolve these issues. The jury was wrong and the senior counsel representing the accused was dangerously irresponsible. The rule of law is important and is of particular importance in the protection of the vulnerable and exploited in our society.
People have a right to decide who should be venerated in their home town. A slave trader isn't one of them.
I also note the sheer hypocrisy of those getting agitated about this verdict who were all-too-happy to throw their support behind those who overthrew Ceaucescu or the protestors in Tiannamen Square.
Libertarians love the overthrow of oppression until it comes to their turn.
Your first sentence is exactly right. But that's people as a whole. If the majority of the city wants rid of a statue, it will be removed. Local democracy is slow and imperfect, but it works. Four hothead can't be allowed to unilaterally decide they represent a city's opinion, even if on this particular subject, they do. Getting the right result by means of the wrong process is the wrong result. Process is important. There is a statue in my home town of James Prescott Joule. If I decided I didn't like physics, what's to stop me pulling it down with the argument 'people have a right to decide who ought to be venerated in their home town'?
My daughters are horrified by the Gandhi statue in Tavistock Square. When they are a bit older, they will be campaigning to have it removed.....
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
Some examples of people who "want to forget about the Barbary Trade" etc?
It's an interesting discussion. Where I live (Cologne) within a few metres of my door I walk over a Stolperstein https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein small brass plaques set in the pavement that just say "here lived" with a name and a date. There are loads of them around the city, they started in Cologne in 1992 and have spread across Germany and beyond. I think they are a good way of remembering victims of Nazism, a lot of the time I don't notice them (any more) as I walk around the neighbourhood, the city, but every now and then I see them and stop and catch my breath.
The AfD and others really don't like them, and they use similar arguments - we should be proud of the many good things in German history, we shouldn't feel guilty about what previous generations did, what about all the other terrible things that other people did, Germany should be confident and not crippled with guilt, the people putting these plaques there are unpatriotic anti-German etc etc.
The Little 'Un asked to go to a Remembrance Day service last November. We went to St Neots, and they had done an interesting thing: all around the streets, attached to lampposts and benches, were the cut-out figures of heads, along with information of people who had lived near that spot, and had died in the war. It was a superb way of personalising the war.
Afterwards we walked to a grave in a small graveyard that has an unusual Commonwealth gravestone in it - a young man who died in January 1919, after the war had ended. Presumably from wounds or the Spanish flu.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
Some examples of people who "want to forget about the Barbary Trade" etc?
It's an interesting discussion. Where I live (Cologne) within a few metres of my door I walk over a Stolperstein https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein small brass plaques set in the pavement that just say "here lived" with a name and a date. There are loads of them around the city, they started in Cologne in 1992 and have spread across Germany and beyond. I think they are a good way of remembering victims of Nazism, a lot of the time I don't notice them (any more) as I walk around the neighbourhood, the city, but every now and then I see them and stop and catch my breath.
The AfD and others really don't like them, and they use similar arguments - we should be proud of the many good things in German history, we shouldn't feel guilty about what previous generations did, what about all the other terrible things that other people did, Germany should be confident and not crippled with guilt, the people putting these plaques there are unpatriotic anti-German etc etc.
I like the Stolperstein - though I would go for stainless steel (longer lasting with lower maintenance) and install them on a wall, if possible, to get round the whole stepping-on-issue. something like the plaques in Paris?
When I attended a course (work provided) on... modern behaviour?... the lecturer included a section on Bad Facts.
These are things, which while true, are actually racist to bring up. Non-white involvement in the slave trade was a bullet point in the example list. Apparently only racists mention it to try and bring non-white people down.
There are reasons why they are in the pavement - the wiki article is quite good and interesting. I think it is more effective as plaques on walls are boring (also the actual buildings were destroyed).
"The name of the Stolpersteine project invokes multiple allusions. In Nazi Germany, an antisemitic saying, when accidentally stumbling over a protruding stone, was: "A Jew must be buried here".[5][6] In a metaphorical sense, the German term Stolperstein can mean "potential problem".[7] The term "to stumble across something", in German and English, can also mean "to find out (by chance)".[8] Thus, the term provocatively invokes an antisemitic remark of the past, but at the same time intends to provoke thoughts about a serious issue. Stolpersteine are not placed prominently, but are rather discovered by chance, only recognizable when passing by at close distance. In contrast to central memorial places, which according to Demnig can be easily avoided or bypassed, Stolpersteine represent a much deeper intrusion of memory into everyday life.
Stolpersteine are placed right into the pavement. When Jewish cemeteries were destroyed throughout Nazi Germany, the gravestones were often repurposed as sidewalk paving stones. The desecration of the memory of the dead was implicitly intended, as people had to walk on the gravestones and tread on the inscriptions. The Stolpersteine provocatively hint at this act of desecration, as they lack any kind of defense against new acts of shame. While the art project thus intends to keep alive the memory, implying that improper acts could easily happen again, the intentional lack of defense against potential desecration also created criticism and concern. Some German cities like Munich still do not accept the setting of Stolpersteine, and look for alternative ways of commemoration instead.[9]"
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
What was one of the interesting things about that discussion of the Colston statue last night was the argument that it was an active act of denial of history in order to titivate Colston's image ('whitewash' would be an unfortunate but perhaps apt expression). The late C19 erectors would certainly qualify as "people who continually do [history] down and seek to relitigate historic sins". As, for example, were the moral warriors of the C19 who tried to prevent Burns's statues on the grounds of his infidelity and immorality. Statue wars are nothing new, and anyone who tries to set history in aspic, or rather in marble and bronze, is in denial of history.
Whilst I agree with most of that throwing a public statue into the harbour is still criminal damage and not the way to resolve these issues. The jury was wrong and the senior counsel representing the accused was dangerously irresponsible. The rule of law is important and is of particular importance in the protection of the vulnerable and exploited in our society.
People have a right to decide who should be venerated in their home town. A slave trader isn't one of them.
I also note the sheer hypocrisy of those getting agitated about this verdict who were all-too-happy to throw their support behind those who overthrew Ceaucescu or the protestors in Tiannamen Square.
Libertarians love the overthrow of oppression until it comes to their turn.
Your first sentence is exactly right. But that's people as a whole. If the majority of the city wants rid of a statue, it will be removed. Local democracy is slow and imperfect, but it works. Four hothead can't be allowed to unilaterally decide they represent a city's opinion, even if on this particular subject, they do. Getting the right result by means of the wrong process is the wrong result. Process is important. There is a statue in my home town of James Prescott Joule. If I decided I didn't like physics, what's to stop me pulling it down with the argument 'people have a right to decide who ought to be venerated in their home town'?
My daughters are horrified by the Gandhi statue in Tavistock Square. When they are a bit older, they will be campaigning to have it removed.....
Are they? Why? Campaigning to have it removed is absolutely fine. What they won' be doing, I assume, is gathering a few mates and some bits and bobs and pulling it down themselves.
Novax is staying in Oz pending a full federal hearing on Monday
Assuming there’s been no technical error on the Australian side, I don’t see how they can back down politically
Which is presumably his argument - that this is a politically-motivated decision in an election year, and not in accordance with the law as is written.
I don’t know what the requirements are for a visa, but the politicians only got involved after he was stopped at the border, so presumably some doubt from the get go
The timeline I saw, has him boasting on social media about getting an exemption - which were done anonymously by civil servants - before he turned up in Australia. The politicians intervened once he did show up there, given he’s been spouting anti-vax propoganda for a year or more.
Yes, that’s all correct.
But the border guard person who stopped him original was - I assume - acting apolitically.
If a politician had intervened ahead of time to have a specific flag put on his passport then he might have a case
I'm probably the most pro vaccine person on this board, if not the world, but even I object to mandatory vaccinations.
I am in favour of making the lives of the non medically exempt unvaccinated hell though.
No benefits for them, ban them from public transport, cinemas, theatres, restaurants, gigs, leaving the country, supermarkets, owning cars etc.
Heck, even deny them the vote.
So they only have freedom if they do what you tell them to?
The problem is there is no easy answer.
Lower healthcare priority would be the obvious starting point but the hippocratic oath stops that from working.
As you can't do that the next approach would be higher NI levels to reflect the additional risk - best approach but not a flick switch response (and has data privacy issues)
So you are left with other means of encouraging them to do their civic duty and stop being a walking petri dish time bomb and there aren't many of those.
Elsewhere won't actually have the problem we have, because elsewhere medical insurance rates could be changed to reflect the added risks and costs not being vaccinated creates.
That's probably why the Italian mandate is for those aged 50+, as I think there are medical insurance changes at around that age as well.
I'm not saying they are stupid as was suggested. They are being gaslit on an epic scale by their media. But Biden DID win the election. Massively. Fairly. Demonstrably. That they still don't believe it is bonkers.
So I think the film got it pitch perfect. Here is something undeniably true. Just look at it. No, its a fake, don't look at it.
57% of Americans think a repeat attempted coup is likely to occur again. Perhaps the Canadian professor was right and the land of the Maple leaf needs to start preparing for refugees fleeing Gilead...
Time is running out for America. I see no sign of any acceptance of the urgency of the situation. Plenty of op-eds in NY Times warning about 2024, but nothing seems to happen.
I agree. The failure to prosecute, convict and jail those responsible for the insurrection attempted a year ago today (as opposed to the stupid foot soldiers) shows the republic to be extremely vulnerable.
By coincidence one of my Christmas presents was Harris's Cicero trilogy. The similarities, with the gradual destruction of rules, standards and precedents that protected the republic from the strong men are stark.
There was a very interesting news piece on that subject a couple of weeks ago, which if it wasn’t from a good source I would have dismissed as a conspiracy theory.
It appears that many of the ringleaders at the Capitol, who are clearly identifiable from photos and videos, haven’t been charged with any offences. Those who have been charged are, as you suggest, mostly the foot soldiers.
The suggestion is that the significant numbers of the ringleaders were either informers or FBI, which is apparently something with a rich history, in a country where entrapment laws don’t seem to apply as they do in the UK.
I think they are trying to get plea bargains etc from the small fry to give testimony against those higher up. This is how they go after organised crime, after all.
Time is running out for America. I see no sign of any acceptance of the urgency of the situation. Plenty of op-eds in NY Times warning about 2024, but nothing seems to happen.
Jan 6 was the start not the end and these people who think everything will be alright if Trump just has an actuarially unlikely heart attack are deluding themselves. He was just a moronic fucking boomer who stumbled on to something by accident.
The number one foreign policy goal of the British government should be to build strategic independence from the US against the day of its very ugly and chaotic disintegration.
Would this include the compulsory imposition of Mandarin in School curriculums? The USA, for all its faults, remains an essential bulwark for freedoms we all too often take for granted.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
Respectfully, that is nonsense. The people who have no confidence in Britain are the ones who think the country will collapse if we examine and criticise aspects of its past behaviour. The fact is that we achieved great wealth in large part via enthusiastic participation in a huge crime (getting rich by forcing others to work for free on pain of death is fairly parasitic I think you would agree). I don't think that the chief architects of that crime should continue to be honoured, especially as our future as a country rests on every one of its citizens, including millions of descendents of slaves, feeling like they have a stake in it. In my opinion it is the statue shaggers who lack any coherent vision of the future - they want us to worship the past without understanding it, and celebrate who we were not who we are or who we could become.
The issue is that the statute destroyers went outside the democratic process. It had been discussed. The local population (IIRC) was divided but wanted to retain it. There was a compromise of a detailed plaque although the wording was challenging to reach a consensus on.
And then a group of people decided that the democratic process wasn’t important.
(As an aside, the way they have left it damaged and on its side in a museum is an interesting and thoughtful response.)
That's a very partial reading of the situation. The Colston culters were essentially blocking any plaque with an accurate account of what Colston had done, preventing a resolution of the issue for years. I would have preferred to see the issue resolved in a different way, but I think the eventual outcome - Colston in a museum, lying in his back with BLM written across his chest in red letters, is the ideal one. And the fact that he was thrown into the waters of one of Britain's largest slave ports along the way isn't something I'm going to get too upset about. I am much more concerned about violence against people than against inanimate objects - having a heavier sentence for damaging a statue than for rape, for instance, is insane.
The wording posted here last night which had apparently been proposed by the merchant venturers did t seem unreasonable to me. It highlighted his role in the RAC, the number of slaves, etc.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
What was one of the interesting things about that discussion of the Colston statue last night was the argument that it was an active act of denial of history in order to titivate Colston's image ('whitewash' would be an unfortunate but perhaps apt expression). The late C19 erectors would certainly qualify as "people who continually do [history] down and seek to relitigate historic sins". As, for example, were the moral warriors of the C19 who tried to prevent Burns's statues on the grounds of his infidelity and immorality. Statue wars are nothing new, and anyone who tries to set history in aspic, or rather in marble and bronze, is in denial of history.
Whilst I agree with most of that throwing a public statue into the harbour is still criminal damage and not the way to resolve these issues. The jury was wrong and the senior counsel representing the accused was dangerously irresponsible. The rule of law is important and is of particular importance in the protection of the vulnerable and exploited in our society.
People have a right to decide who should be venerated in their home town. A slave trader isn't one of them.
I also note the sheer hypocrisy of those getting agitated about this verdict who were all-too-happy to throw their support behind those who overthrew Ceaucescu or the protestors in Tiannamen Square.
Libertarians love the overthrow of oppression until it comes to their turn.
Your first sentence is exactly right. But that's people as a whole. If the majority of the city wants rid of a statue, it will be removed. Local democracy is slow and imperfect, but it works. Four hothead can't be allowed to unilaterally decide they represent a city's opinion, even if on this particular subject, they do. Getting the right result by means of the wrong process is the wrong result. Process is important. There is a statue in my home town of James Prescott Joule. If I decided I didn't like physics, what's to stop me pulling it down with the argument 'people have a right to decide who ought to be venerated in their home town'?
My daughters are horrified by the Gandhi statue in Tavistock Square. When they are a bit older, they will be campaigning to have it removed.....
Novax is staying in Oz pending a full federal hearing on Monday
Assuming there’s been no technical error on the Australian side, I don’t see how they can back down politically
Which is presumably his argument - that this is a politically-motivated decision in an election year, and not in accordance with the law as is written.
I don’t know what the requirements are for a visa, but the politicians only got involved after he was stopped at the border, so presumably some doubt from the get go
The timeline I saw, has him boasting on social media about getting an exemption - which were done anonymously by civil servants - before he turned up in Australia. The politicians intervened once he did show up there, given he’s been spouting anti-vax propoganda for a year or more.
Yes, that’s all correct.
But the border guard person who stopped him original was - I assume - acting apolitically.
If a politician had intervened ahead of time to have a specific flag put on his passport then he might have a case
Unless I've missed something overnight - the reason Novax was stopped was because the visa he was using for entry didn't allow for the medical exemption he was claiming.
Now that could be because of a screwup by the Australian Open people or it could be because Novax team screwed up. We will just have to wait and see.
More interesting question is where will Novax being kept until Monday morning. That's going to be a long time in a small airport room if he isn't allowed to leave the airport and go landside.
Boris Johnson is playing such a dangerous game. The right wing press, whose journalists have private health care insurance, love it. But the NHS is close to on its knees now.
Letting this rip may be beloved of the cull-set but for most of us who have a heart and soul we're now gambling with many lives.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
Both are about power, and its abuse.
What is interesting about a lot of the talk in recent years around slavery is that so much of the focus has been on the Slave Trade i.e. the transporting of slaves, rather than Slavery, the actual nature of slavery per se.
At first sight, that seems odd. Why focus on the logistics (cruel and demonic as they were)? Well, because it allows the issue to be presented as an European sin. Many cultures have practiced slavery and, when it came to the African slave trade (a) Arabs were responsible for most of it and (b) it was African rulers who sold people of their skin colour over to the white man. So, you focus on slavery per se, you quickly realise many parties were involved. However, if you focus on the transportation aspect, it allows the problem to be presented as a European one.
Now, there are other factors. The abolitionists, for example, popularised the conditions in the slave ships and that led to outrage. Still, if the Europeans had not of conducted the trade, would the slaves have been released? The answer is No, because African rulers were selling their enemies - they would have been killed or sold to the Arabs.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
What was one of the interesting things about that discussion of the Colston statue last night was the argument that it was an active act of denial of history in order to titivate Colston's image ('whitewash' would be an unfortunate but perhaps apt expression). The late C19 erectors would certainly qualify as "people who continually do [history] down and seek to relitigate historic sins". As, for example, were the moral warriors of the C19 who tried to prevent Burns's statues on the grounds of his infidelity and immorality. Statue wars are nothing new, and anyone who tries to set history in aspic, or rather in marble and bronze, is in denial of history.
Whilst I agree with most of that throwing a public statue into the harbour is still criminal damage and not the way to resolve these issues. The jury was wrong and the senior counsel representing the accused was dangerously irresponsible. The rule of law is important and is of particular importance in the protection of the vulnerable and exploited in our society.
People have a right to decide who should be venerated in their home town. A slave trader isn't one of them.
I also note the sheer hypocrisy of those getting agitated about this verdict who were all-too-happy to throw their support behind those who overthrew Ceaucescu or the protestors in Tiannamen Square.
Libertarians love the overthrow of oppression until it comes to their turn.
Your first sentence is exactly right. But that's people as a whole. If the majority of the city wants rid of a statue, it will be removed. Local democracy is slow and imperfect, but it works. Four hothead can't be allowed to unilaterally decide they represent a city's opinion, even if on this particular subject, they do. Getting the right result by means of the wrong process is the wrong result. Process is important. There is a statue in my home town of James Prescott Joule. If I decided I didn't like physics, what's to stop me pulling it down with the argument 'people have a right to decide who ought to be venerated in their home town'?
My daughters are horrified by the Gandhi statue in Tavistock Square. When they are a bit older, they will be campaigning to have it removed.....
Are they? Why? Campaigning to have it removed is absolutely fine. What they won' be doing, I assume, is gathering a few mates and some bits and bobs and pulling it down themselves.
The role of historians is to accurately relate the past, as much as available evidence and the power of reason permits. It isn't to super-impose modern day political sensibilities, and that can not only pervert by the bastardry of revisionism what history is taught but make it outright inaccurate.
In Justin Pollard's biography of Alfred he explains that Ivar the Boneless' odd nickname may be down to a mistranslation. In another book on Norse history (well, mythology, but the Sons of Ragnar cover both) it is written without any qualification or alternative that the nickname is because Ivar had cartilage rather than bones and was taken as proof of the shift away from battlefront prowess towards respect for intelligence in leadership.
Vikings always approved of cunning, but the second approach cuts out a valuable, and more probable, explanation of the name.
I recently read a Greek history in which the historian unashamedly referred to Marxism as being a good way to interpret the past. Needless to say, I did not agree.
Isn't a new attempt at accurate relation itself a reinterpretion by its nature? New evidence, new ideas ...
To a degree. New info, or ideas, can lead to reassessment quite appropriately. But setting out to reinterpret seems putting cart before horse, hence the old critical joke of overactive revisionism leading to proving event X did not happen as the reinterpretation argues against all the theories about why it happened.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
What was one of the interesting things about that discussion of the Colston statue last night was the argument that it was an active act of denial of history in order to titivate Colston's image ('whitewash' would be an unfortunate but perhaps apt expression). The late C19 erectors would certainly qualify as "people who continually do [history] down and seek to relitigate historic sins". As, for example, were the moral warriors of the C19 who tried to prevent Burns's statues on the grounds of his infidelity and immorality. Statue wars are nothing new, and anyone who tries to set history in aspic, or rather in marble and bronze, is in denial of history.
Whilst I agree with most of that throwing a public statue into the harbour is still criminal damage and not the way to resolve these issues. The jury was wrong and the senior counsel representing the accused was dangerously irresponsible. The rule of law is important and is of particular importance in the protection of the vulnerable and exploited in our society.
People have a right to decide who should be venerated in their home town. A slave trader isn't one of them.
I also note the sheer hypocrisy of those getting agitated about this verdict who were all-too-happy to throw their support behind those who overthrew Ceaucescu or the protestors in Tiannamen Square.
Libertarians love the overthrow of oppression until it comes to their turn.
Your first sentence is exactly right. But that's people as a whole. If the majority of the city wants rid of a statue, it will be removed. Local democracy is slow and imperfect, but it works. Four hothead can't be allowed to unilaterally decide they represent a city's opinion, even if on this particular subject, they do. Getting the right result by means of the wrong process is the wrong result. Process is important. There is a statue in my home town of James Prescott Joule. If I decided I didn't like physics, what's to stop me pulling it down with the argument 'people have a right to decide who ought to be venerated in their home town'?
Getting a jury to find you not guilty would be harder unless you could show strong evidence that the majority of the city supported your actions. If we have jury trials that is part of the process. Lay jurors will inevitably give consideration as to whether an action is wrong as well as illegal. If it is not both they often acquit. That doesn't seem like a particular flaw in the system, generally it is a positive feature against bad law and state overreach.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
Respectfully, that is nonsense. The people who have no confidence in Britain are the ones who think the country will collapse if we examine and criticise aspects of its past behaviour. The fact is that we achieved great wealth in large part via enthusiastic participation in a huge crime (getting rich by forcing others to work for free on pain of death is fairly parasitic I think you would agree). I don't think that the chief architects of that crime should continue to be honoured, especially as our future as a country rests on every one of its citizens, including millions of descendents of slaves, feeling like they have a stake in it. In my opinion it is the statue shaggers who lack any coherent vision of the future - they want us to worship the past without understanding it, and celebrate who we were not who we are or who we could become.
The issue is that the statute destroyers went outside the democratic process. It had been discussed. The local population (IIRC) was divided but wanted to retain it. There was a compromise of a detailed plaque although the wording was challenging to reach a consensus on.
And then a group of people decided that the democratic process wasn’t important.
(As an aside, the way they have left it damaged and on its side in a museum is an interesting and thoughtful response.)
That's a very partial reading of the situation. The Colston culters were essentially blocking any plaque with an accurate account of what Colston had done, preventing a resolution of the issue for years. I would have preferred to see the issue resolved in a different way, but I think the eventual outcome - Colston in a museum, lying in his back with BLM written across his chest in red letters, is the ideal one. And the fact that he was thrown into the waters of one of Britain's largest slave ports along the way isn't something I'm going to get too upset about. I am much more concerned about violence against people than against inanimate objects - having a heavier sentence for damaging a statue than for rape, for instance, is insane.
The wording posted here last night which had apparently been proposed by the merchant venturers did t seem unreasonable to me. It highlighted his role in the RAC, the number of slaves, etc.
The wording was being blocked through - which is why things came to a head. The Colston culters wanted far less detail.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
What was one of the interesting things about that discussion of the Colston statue last night was the argument that it was an active act of denial of history in order to titivate Colston's image ('whitewash' would be an unfortunate but perhaps apt expression). The late C19 erectors would certainly qualify as "people who continually do [history] down and seek to relitigate historic sins". As, for example, were the moral warriors of the C19 who tried to prevent Burns's statues on the grounds of his infidelity and immorality. Statue wars are nothing new, and anyone who tries to set history in aspic, or rather in marble and bronze, is in denial of history.
Whilst I agree with most of that throwing a public statue into the harbour is still criminal damage and not the way to resolve these issues. The jury was wrong and the senior counsel representing the accused was dangerously irresponsible. The rule of law is important and is of particular importance in the protection of the vulnerable and exploited in our society.
People have a right to decide who should be venerated in their home town. A slave trader isn't one of them.
I also note the sheer hypocrisy of those getting agitated about this verdict who were all-too-happy to throw their support behind those who overthrew Ceaucescu or the protestors in Tiannamen Square.
Libertarians love the overthrow of oppression until it comes to their turn.
How exactly were these four white protestors, some not even from Bristol, OPPRESSED by a statue?
I'm not saying they are stupid as was suggested. They are being gaslit on an epic scale by their media. But Biden DID win the election. Massively. Fairly. Demonstrably. That they still don't believe it is bonkers.
So I think the film got it pitch perfect. Here is something undeniably true. Just look at it. No, its a fake, don't look at it.
57% of Americans think a repeat attempted coup is likely to occur again. Perhaps the Canadian professor was right and the land of the Maple leaf needs to start preparing for refugees fleeing Gilead...
Time is running out for America. I see no sign of any acceptance of the urgency of the situation. Plenty of op-eds in NY Times warning about 2024, but nothing seems to happen.
I know that I am happily quoting pop culture by warning of Gilead. And the book was written in the 80s so its not contemporary. But the notion of it IS absolutely bang up to date. That new Texas law allowing men to shop womenfolk for cash for their crimes of seeking an abortion is straight out of Gilead.
We know that a significant number of Americans have been persuaded to Don't Look Up, that there was no coup, that the election was stolen. If they can be manipulated to believe things they witnessed to have not happened then they can be manipulated to believe anything.
There isn't an obvious USA/CSA border split this time is there?
North East plus the lakes (including Chicago, Minnesota, etc) is one country
Pacific North West and NorCal is another
The rest is a third
I assume that we are trying to create a blue America and a red America. I never made it up to Portland and Seattle - are you putting them into the red camp? Would have thought (with no real world experience admittedly) that places like Seattle were blue. I would expect that most of the flyover and mountain states would be red as well.
Not sure how California (or are you just saying SF downwards?) would cope on its own as the only blue outpost west of Illinois.
I'm probably the most pro vaccine person on this board, if not the world, but even I object to mandatory vaccinations.
I am in favour of making the lives of the non medically exempt unvaccinated hell though.
No benefits for them, ban them from public transport, cinemas, theatres, restaurants, gigs, leaving the country, supermarkets, owning cars etc.
Heck, even deny them the vote.
So they only have freedom if they do what you tell them to?
The problem is there is no easy answer.
Lower healthcare priority would be the obvious starting point but the hippocratic oath stops that from working.
As you can't do that the next approach would be higher NI levels to reflect the additional risk - best approach but not a flick switch response (and has data privacy issues)
So you are left with other means of encouraging them to do their civic duty and stop being a walking petri dish time bomb and there aren't many of those.
Elsewhere won't actually have the problem we have, because elsewhere medical insurance rates could be changed to reflect the added risks and costs not being vaccinated creates.
That's probably why the Italian mandate is for those aged 50+, as I think there are medical insurance changes at around that age as well.
I know. I was just pointing out that @TheScreamingEagles proposal was as bad as a schoolgirl on some of his favourite websites
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
What was one of the interesting things about that discussion of the Colston statue last night was the argument that it was an active act of denial of history in order to titivate Colston's image ('whitewash' would be an unfortunate but perhaps apt expression). The late C19 erectors would certainly qualify as "people who continually do [history] down and seek to relitigate historic sins". As, for example, were the moral warriors of the C19 who tried to prevent Burns's statues on the grounds of his infidelity and immorality. Statue wars are nothing new, and anyone who tries to set history in aspic, or rather in marble and bronze, is in denial of history.
Whilst I agree with most of that throwing a public statue into the harbour is still criminal damage and not the way to resolve these issues. The jury was wrong and the senior counsel representing the accused was dangerously irresponsible. The rule of law is important and is of particular importance in the protection of the vulnerable and exploited in our society.
AIUI English juries are always right, corruption and similar events aside. By definition and by law.
I don't think Mr Colston's avatar was 'vulnerable and exploited' in that social sense at least, and neither are the Merchant Venturers of Bristol. What actually puzzles me, now I think aboutt it some more, is how they even had a locus in the matter of the plaque to be placed on the statue - unfortunate as it worked so obviously to obstruct progress and prevent the head of political steam from not building up and exploding. What right did they have any more than any other Bristol organization or citizen, to block the actions of the elected mayor?
The senior counsel for the accused described this as "a cancer in their society that needed to be plucked out" and urged the jury to be on the right side of history. At the risk of incurring the wrath of Godwin so early in the day many people in many societies have felt that about Jews or other minorities. The rule of law does not contemplate choosing what laws you feel like supporting on a particular day.
Yes, agreed. Many of those in Germany in the 1930s felt they needed to be on "the right side of history" by taking action against Jewish people.
Ps Kamski - I agree with your point on the plaques - it is awful for the AfD campaigning for them to be removed.
Novax is staying in Oz pending a full federal hearing on Monday
Assuming there’s been no technical error on the Australian side, I don’t see how they can back down politically
Which is presumably his argument - that this is a politically-motivated decision in an election year, and not in accordance with the law as is written.
I don’t know what the requirements are for a visa, but the politicians only got involved after he was stopped at the border, so presumably some doubt from the get go
The timeline I saw, has him boasting on social media about getting an exemption - which were done anonymously by civil servants - before he turned up in Australia. The politicians intervened once he did show up there, given he’s been spouting anti-vax propoganda for a year or more.
Yes, that’s all correct.
But the border guard person who stopped him original was - I assume - acting apolitically.
If a politician had intervened ahead of time to have a specific flag put on his passport then he might have a case
Unless I've missed something overnight - the reason Novax was stopped was because the visa he was using for entry didn't allow for the medical exemption he was claiming.
Now that could be because of a screwup by the Australian Open people or it could be because Novax team screwed up. We will just have to wait and see.
More interesting question is where will Novax being kept until Monday morning. That's going to be a long time in a small airport room if he isn't allowed to leave the airport and go landside.
Just watched the Australian border force drive him into the garage of a quarantine hotel surrounded by staff all in ppe and apparently with guards
Just heard a report from Melbourne that Djokovic is claiming he has natural immunity to covid/omicron
Good luck with that
Is the natural immunity down to
- Taking lots of vitamin D - Goat de-worming pills - Hot broth - Jif in the hot broth - Taking lots of cold showers and rolling in the dirt to "exercise the immune system"
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
Both are about power, and its abuse.
What is interesting about a lot of the talk in recent years around slavery is that so much of the focus has been on the Slave Trade i.e. the transporting of slaves, rather than Slavery, the actual nature of slavery per se.
At first sight, that seems odd. Why focus on the logistics (cruel and demonic as they were)? Well, because it allows the issue to be presented as an European sin. Many cultures have practiced slavery and, when it came to the African slave trade (a) Arabs were responsible for most of it and (b) it was African rulers who sold people of their skin colour over to the white man. So, you focus on slavery per se, you quickly realise many parties were involved. However, if you focus on the transportation aspect, it allows the problem to be presented as a European one.
Now, there are other factors. The abolitionists, for example, popularised the conditions in the slave ships and that led to outrage. Still, if the Europeans had not of conducted the trade, would the slaves have been released? The answer is No, because African rulers were selling their enemies - they would have been killed or sold to the Arabs.
This "yebbut Africans enslaved other Africans" stuff really is whataboutery in its purest form. Just one answer to it is, the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions.
You attack the logistics because that is where you get most bang for your anti slavery buck. As a slightly salient current parallel, you go after the procuring and transportation of children for purposes of abuse, harder than you go after the end users.
"Both sides"ism doesnt work when only one side instigated a coup.
A forward briefly putting his hand on the defenders shoulder may be a foul. The defender in return punching the attacker to the floor is also a foul. It would not be a case of half a dozen of one and half a dozen of the other.
Novax is staying in Oz pending a full federal hearing on Monday
Assuming there’s been no technical error on the Australian side, I don’t see how they can back down politically
Which is presumably his argument - that this is a politically-motivated decision in an election year, and not in accordance with the law as is written.
I don’t know what the requirements are for a visa, but the politicians only got involved after he was stopped at the border, so presumably some doubt from the get go
The timeline I saw, has him boasting on social media about getting an exemption - which were done anonymously by civil servants - before he turned up in Australia. The politicians intervened once he did show up there, given he’s been spouting anti-vax propoganda for a year or more.
Yes, that’s all correct.
But the border guard person who stopped him original was - I assume - acting apolitically.
If a politician had intervened ahead of time to have a specific flag put on his passport then he might have a case
Unless I've missed something overnight - the reason Novax was stopped was because the visa he was using for entry didn't allow for the medical exemption he was claiming.
Now that could be because of a screwup by the Australian Open people or it could be because Novax team screwed up. We will just have to wait and see.
More interesting question is where will Novax being kept until Monday morning. That's going to be a long time in a small airport room if he isn't allowed to leave the airport and go landside.
Yes - I believe there was an error on his entry visa. Probably a screw up on his teams part to be honest. But then he was stopped in the ordinary course.
(News reports are he’s been sent to a quarantine hotel until the appeal has played out)
Time is running out for America. I see no sign of any acceptance of the urgency of the situation. Plenty of op-eds in NY Times warning about 2024, but nothing seems to happen.
Jan 6 was the start not the end and these people who think everything will be alright if Trump just has an actuarially unlikely heart attack are deluding themselves. He was just a moronic fucking boomer who stumbled on to something by accident.
The number one foreign policy goal of the British government should be to build strategic independence from the US against the day of its very ugly and chaotic disintegration.
What about the F-35 support, maintenance and software?
The Israelis operate their F-35 Adirs outside the ALIS/ODIN system and they are going to need all the friends they can get.
F135 engine maintenance and test is in the Netherlands and MRO&U is done in Italy.
The Iranians kept their F-14's flying for decades in the face of US sanctions. Although the F-14's are now rather long in the tooth, even with the limited upgrades they have done, they are better than nothing. And non-US countries have much larger technology and engineering capabilities than Iran, and have been intimately involved with the development of the F-35.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
What was one of the interesting things about that discussion of the Colston statue last night was the argument that it was an active act of denial of history in order to titivate Colston's image ('whitewash' would be an unfortunate but perhaps apt expression). The late C19 erectors would certainly qualify as "people who continually do [history] down and seek to relitigate historic sins". As, for example, were the moral warriors of the C19 who tried to prevent Burns's statues on the grounds of his infidelity and immorality. Statue wars are nothing new, and anyone who tries to set history in aspic, or rather in marble and bronze, is in denial of history.
Whilst I agree with most of that throwing a public statue into the harbour is still criminal damage and not the way to resolve these issues. The jury was wrong and the senior counsel representing the accused was dangerously irresponsible. The rule of law is important and is of particular importance in the protection of the vulnerable and exploited in our society.
People have a right to decide who should be venerated in their home town. A slave trader isn't one of them.
I also note the sheer hypocrisy of those getting agitated about this verdict who were all-too-happy to throw their support behind those who overthrew Ceaucescu or the protestors in Tiannamen Square.
Libertarians love the overthrow of oppression until it comes to their turn.
Your first sentence is exactly right. But that's people as a whole. If the majority of the city wants rid of a statue, it will be removed. Local democracy is slow and imperfect, but it works. Four hothead can't be allowed to unilaterally decide they represent a city's opinion, even if on this particular subject, they do. Getting the right result by means of the wrong process is the wrong result. Process is important. There is a statue in my home town of James Prescott Joule. If I decided I didn't like physics, what's to stop me pulling it down with the argument 'people have a right to decide who ought to be venerated in their home town'?
My daughters are horrified by the Gandhi statue in Tavistock Square. When they are a bit older, they will be campaigning to have it removed.....
I'm going to hate the answer (I'm sure everyone here is) but why don't they like Gandhi.
I suspect it's because he didn't treat everyone equally (as was the way then) but he lived in a different world and big bang approaches don't (or incredibly rarely) work. Everything has to be done in baby steps especially the early days.
At some point Emily Davison will be being attacked on animal cruelty grounds.
Just heard a report from Melbourne that Djokovic is claiming he has natural immunity to covid/omicron
Good luck with that
AIUI that (if he has had a +ve PCR within 6 months) is specifically enough to get into Victoria and participate in the Aus Open. It seems that it is not enough to get into Australia though.
I assume you are joking when you suggest that people are walking into restaurants and cinemas cheerfully infecting people. The seek to blame is very regrettable IMO. Infection isn't imprinted with details of the particular person you get the virus from and there is no nefarious intent here in any case.
The foe is the virus not its particular host.
The narrative that has developed is that vaccinated people are safe and unvaccinated are a danger. It is conveniently being forgotten that vaccinated people transmit too. Not sure what the latest science is on the relative transmissibility of the two groups.
The future we should be aiming for - fast - is one where we rub shoulders with everyone again, without firstly seeking to establish, demonise and avoid people for making a legal choice.
My understanding is that people who are vaccinated and boosted have a lower risk of catching the infection (even asymptomatically) and therefore a lower risk of passing it on. If that wasn't true, then I agree it would change the position and restrictions on anti-vaxxers would be unfair.
Otherwise, it should not be legal during a pandemic to refuse to protect yourself and simultaneously demand the right to infect others by entering crowded facilities. It's ultimate cakeism.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
Both are about power, and its abuse.
Interesting point. For most of history, slaves have been of the same race as slave owners, for obvious reasons - those of different races were too far away. But the slavery we are most familiar with was made easier for contemporaries to justify by its victims being of a different race - easier to view as 'not really human'. That said, IIRC, the main taboo was on Christians enslaving non-Christians - so perhaps being of a different religion was more important (and a 'primitive' religion too - other monotheists were afforded rather more respect).
A nuance which is seldom discussed is that my understanding is that the British did little or no capturing of Africans for slavery - they were bought from other Africans (presumably losers in local wars?) That makes the British part in it only mildly less abhorrent, yes - but the role of how the slaves were enslaved in the first place is rarely discussed (and I certainly don't have any sort of handle on it).
I believe they're planning on shooting the unvaccinated.
Not if they remain in the EU they're not. Sovereign Brexit Britain on the other hand...
Remind me - which countries are being most harsh amongst France, Italy, UK?
I am not saying we are likely to take capital action against anti-vaxxers. Nonetheless an unforeseen Brexit bonus is should we desire so to do, we can.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
Both are about power, and its abuse.
What is interesting about a lot of the talk in recent years around slavery is that so much of the focus has been on the Slave Trade i.e. the transporting of slaves, rather than Slavery, the actual nature of slavery per se.
At first sight, that seems odd. Why focus on the logistics (cruel and demonic as they were)? Well, because it allows the issue to be presented as an European sin. Many cultures have practiced slavery and, when it came to the African slave trade (a) Arabs were responsible for most of it and (b) it was African rulers who sold people of their skin colour over to the white man. So, you focus on slavery per se, you quickly realise many parties were involved. However, if you focus on the transportation aspect, it allows the problem to be presented as a European one.
Now, there are other factors. The abolitionists, for example, popularised the conditions in the slave ships and that led to outrage. Still, if the Europeans had not of conducted the trade, would the slaves have been released? The answer is No, because African rulers were selling their enemies - they would have been killed or sold to the Arabs.
This "yebbut Africans enslaved other Africans" stuff really is whataboutery in its purest form. Just one answer to it is, the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions.
You attack the logistics because that is where you get most bang for your anti slavery buck. As a slightly salient current parallel, you go after the procuring and transportation of children for purposes of abuse, harder than you go after the end users.
"Just one answer to it is, the Africans didn't claim to have the benefit of Christianity and the Enlightenment to guide their actions."
So essentially your argument is that slavery is not wrong, it's only if it is practiced by Christians that it is. SO, totally fine for Muslims, Hindus etc to do it?
In that case then, I assume you also think it is not wrong for gay people to be killed in the Middle East because, eh, they are Muslim and they have a different way of doing things.
Ps getting all Godwin. The Nazis weren't Christian either, they were essentially Pagans. Guess we have to revisit what they did in the light of their beliefs.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
Respectfully, that is nonsense. The people who have no confidence in Britain are the ones who think the country will collapse if we examine and criticise aspects of its past behaviour. The fact is that we achieved great wealth in large part via enthusiastic participation in a huge crime (getting rich by forcing others to work for free on pain of death is fairly parasitic I think you would agree). I don't think that the chief architects of that crime should continue to be honoured, especially as our future as a country rests on every one of its citizens, including millions of descendents of slaves, feeling like they have a stake in it. In my opinion it is the statue shaggers who lack any coherent vision of the future - they want us to worship the past without understanding it, and celebrate who we were not who we are or who we could become.
The issue is that the statute destroyers went outside the democratic process. It had been discussed. The local population (IIRC) was divided but wanted to retain it. There was a compromise of a detailed plaque although the wording was challenging to reach a consensus on.
And then a group of people decided that the democratic process wasn’t important.
(As an aside, the way they have left it damaged and on its side in a museum is an interesting and thoughtful response.)
That's a very partial reading of the situation. The Colston culters were essentially blocking any plaque with an accurate account of what Colston had done, preventing a resolution of the issue for years. I would have preferred to see the issue resolved in a different way, but I think the eventual outcome - Colston in a museum, lying in his back with BLM written across his chest in red letters, is the ideal one. And the fact that he was thrown into the waters of one of Britain's largest slave ports along the way isn't something I'm going to get too upset about. I am much more concerned about violence against people than against inanimate objects - having a heavier sentence for damaging a statue than for rape, for instance, is insane.
The wording posted here last night which had apparently been proposed by the merchant venturers did t seem unreasonable to me. It highlighted his role in the RAC, the number of slaves, etc.
The wording was being blocked through - which is why things came to a head. The Colston culters wanted far less detail.
It was the mayor who kept vetoing the wording. The wording posted was from the Merchant Venturers (who I assume you are referring to as the “culters”)
Just heard a report from Melbourne that Djokovic is claiming he has natural immunity to covid/omicron
Good luck with that
Is the natural immunity down to
- Taking lots of vitamin D - Goat de-worming pills - Hot broth - Jif in the hot broth - Taking lots of cold showers and rolling in the dirt to "exercise the immune system"
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
What was one of the interesting things about that discussion of the Colston statue last night was the argument that it was an active act of denial of history in order to titivate Colston's image ('whitewash' would be an unfortunate but perhaps apt expression). The late C19 erectors would certainly qualify as "people who continually do [history] down and seek to relitigate historic sins". As, for example, were the moral warriors of the C19 who tried to prevent Burns's statues on the grounds of his infidelity and immorality. Statue wars are nothing new, and anyone who tries to set history in aspic, or rather in marble and bronze, is in denial of history.
Whilst I agree with most of that throwing a public statue into the harbour is still criminal damage and not the way to resolve these issues. The jury was wrong and the senior counsel representing the accused was dangerously irresponsible. The rule of law is important and is of particular importance in the protection of the vulnerable and exploited in our society.
People have a right to decide who should be venerated in their home town. A slave trader isn't one of them.
I also note the sheer hypocrisy of those getting agitated about this verdict who were all-too-happy to throw their support behind those who overthrew Ceaucescu or the protestors in Tiannamen Square.
Libertarians love the overthrow of oppression until it comes to their turn.
Your first sentence is exactly right. But that's people as a whole. If the majority of the city wants rid of a statue, it will be removed. Local democracy is slow and imperfect, but it works. Four hothead can't be allowed to unilaterally decide they represent a city's opinion, even if on this particular subject, they do. Getting the right result by means of the wrong process is the wrong result. Process is important. There is a statue in my home town of James Prescott Joule. If I decided I didn't like physics, what's to stop me pulling it down with the argument 'people have a right to decide who ought to be venerated in their home town'?
My daughters are horrified by the Gandhi statue in Tavistock Square. When they are a bit older, they will be campaigning to have it removed.....
I'm going to hate the answer (I'm sure everyone here is) but why don't they like Gandhi.
I suspect it's because he didn't treat everyone equally (as was the way then) but he lived in a different world and big bang approaches don't (or incredibly rarely) work. Everything has to be done in baby steps especially the early days.
At some point Emily Davison will be being attacked on animal cruelty grounds.
Racism and er.... brahmacharya....
They (and their friends) picked this up on their own - via TikTok and the like.
It is interesting how they have a category for "normal" and.... "cancelled" and that's it. Good/Bad is much easier when you are a teenager.
Just heard a report from Melbourne that Djokovic is claiming he has natural immunity to covid/omicron
Good luck with that
That’s the Joe Rogan defence.
The problem with both men is that before they had Covid, they were saying they just need to be fit and take their vitamins and they’d be fine, no need to get vaccinated and potentially screw themselves up.
I'm not saying they are stupid as was suggested. They are being gaslit on an epic scale by their media. But Biden DID win the election. Massively. Fairly. Demonstrably. That they still don't believe it is bonkers.
So I think the film got it pitch perfect. Here is something undeniably true. Just look at it. No, its a fake, don't look at it.
57% of Americans think a repeat attempted coup is likely to occur again. Perhaps the Canadian professor was right and the land of the Maple leaf needs to start preparing for refugees fleeing Gilead...
Time is running out for America. I see no sign of any acceptance of the urgency of the situation. Plenty of op-eds in NY Times warning about 2024, but nothing seems to happen.
I know that I am happily quoting pop culture by warning of Gilead. And the book was written in the 80s so its not contemporary. But the notion of it IS absolutely bang up to date. That new Texas law allowing men to shop womenfolk for cash for their crimes of seeking an abortion is straight out of Gilead.
We know that a significant number of Americans have been persuaded to Don't Look Up, that there was no coup, that the election was stolen. If they can be manipulated to believe things they witnessed to have not happened then they can be manipulated to believe anything.
There isn't an obvious USA/CSA border split this time is there?
North East plus the lakes (including Chicago, Minnesota, etc) is one country
Pacific North West and NorCal is another
The rest is a third
I assume that we are trying to create a blue America and a red America. I never made it up to Portland and Seattle - are you putting them into the red camp? Would have thought (with no real world experience admittedly) that places like Seattle were blue. I would expect that most of the flyover and mountain states would be red as well.
Not sure how California (or are you just saying SF downwards?) would cope on its own as the only blue outpost west of Illinois.
Yes responding to the question on natural division between USA/CSA
Washing & Oregon plus California coast down to LA would be in the “pacific north west” country. Rather than a Pakistan/East Pakistan structure seemed simpler to separate from day 1.
SoCal is fairly red - Long Beach down to San Diego and across the Inland Empire to Arizona and NM.
I assume you are joking when you suggest that people are walking into restaurants and cinemas cheerfully infecting people. The seek to blame is very regrettable IMO. Infection isn't imprinted with details of the particular person you get the virus from and there is no nefarious intent here in any case.
The foe is the virus not its particular host.
The narrative that has developed is that vaccinated people are safe and unvaccinated are a danger. It is conveniently being forgotten that vaccinated people transmit too. Not sure what the latest science is on the relative transmissibility of the two groups.
The future we should be aiming for - fast - is one where we rub shoulders with everyone again, without firstly seeking to establish, demonise and avoid people for making a legal choice.
My understanding is that people who are vaccinated and boosted have a lower risk of catching the infection (even asymptomatically) and therefore a lower risk of passing it on. If that wasn't true, then I agree it would change the position and restrictions on anti-vaxxers would be unfair.
Otherwise, it should not be legal during a pandemic to refuse to protect yourself and simultaneously demand the right to infect others by entering crowded facilities. It's ultimate cakeism.
No one is demanding the right to infect others. Seriously?
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
No. The role of historians is to look at the past and reinterpret it. It always has been.
The crimes of Empire are not centuries old, there are still survivors of British torture in Kenyan concentration camps alive for example.
But you cannot reinterpret history without first studying it.
Our current lot of aspirational iconoclasts do not want to study history; they want to use it as a quarry to pick out bits and pieces to justify the things they want to do, or have done.
Those talking about 'slavery' want to ignore the black tribes who sold captives from other black tribes to the white man and the Islamic man in order to make money; they want to ignore black on black slavery in Africa (both still within contemporary memory);
They want to forget about the Barbary Trade enslaving European people; they want to ignore the role of Empire in stopping slavery; and they (and perhaps we) want to ignore the wider historical compass, such as the role of slavery as foundational for the ancient societies we say we admire.
They (and we) also need to think about the historic practice of selling-off of war captives.
And they want to destroy history, without studying it in the round.
That imo is why the unthinking anti-colonialist, BLM movements etc have to be questioned strongly enough to remove such deliberate biases.
I would enthusiastically remove any statues to Barbary slavers on British High streets if you can direct me to them.
A silly response to a serious point. It is not excusing slavery, or belittling its tragedy and the suffering it caused, to talk about the context of slavery contemporaneously around the world.
If anything, ignoring the wider topic of slavery is excusing and belittling the suffering of millions of people, including down to the current day.
My (perhaps contentious and at risk of being heavily criticised for obvious reasons) view is that race is usually the wrong prism for studying slavery, as sex is the wrong prism for studying rape.
Both are about power, and its abuse.
Interesting point. For most of history, slaves have been of the same race as slave owners, for obvious reasons - those of different races were too far away. But the slavery we are most familiar with was made easier for contemporaries to justify by its victims being of a different race - easier to view as 'not really human'. That said, IIRC, the main taboo was on Christians enslaving non-Christians - so perhaps being of a different religion was more important (and a 'primitive' religion too - other monotheists were afforded rather more respect).
A nuance which is seldom discussed is that my understanding is that the British did little or no capturing of Africans for slavery - they were bought from other Africans (presumably losers in local wars?) That makes the British part in it only mildly less abhorrent, yes - but the role of how the slaves were enslaved in the first place is rarely discussed (and I certainly don't have any sort of handle on it).
Correct. But, as Ishmael has just demonstrated, you get people who think that's ok for Africans to enslave others because they are not Christians and / or "of another culture". If that is your outlook on things, then you should throw away the rule book of Universal Rights, stop hectoring other nations such as China on violations, and accept that each set of people have the right to do their own thing, including chucking gays to their deaths from tall buildings and stoning women to death.
I’m with @Charles on this. I don’t agree with mandatory vaccination for adults at all. Such a slippery slope. People seem to be unable to be rational and are acting out of blind fear.
Compulsory vaccination for children, sure, but not adults. The state shouldn’t be mandating what adults inject into their bodies.
Reflecting further on yesterdays discussions. The harsh and difficult reality is that both slavery and colonialism are features of human civilisation. The fact that a lot of people cannot come to terms with the fact that Britain both partook in and, eventually, abolished these institutions is really sad. It is actually laughable and pathetic; a failure of education.
Britain is not perfect but remains one of the most progressive, least racist, countries in the world. Anyone who is truly concerned about racism or slavery need only to look to the developing world, where both are prevalent and expanding. Look no further than China.
The abolition of slavery and colonialism are major achievements. But Britain is in a death spiral caused by a loss of confidence in itself and what it has achieved over its history. The people who continually do it down and seek to relitigate historic sins have no coherant vision of the future. They are just parasites destroying the host.
Respectfully, that is nonsense. The people who have no confidence in Britain are the ones who think the country will collapse if we examine and criticise aspects of its past behaviour. The fact is that we achieved great wealth in large part via enthusiastic participation in a huge crime (getting rich by forcing others to work for free on pain of death is fairly parasitic I think you would agree). I don't think that the chief architects of that crime should continue to be honoured, especially as our future as a country rests on every one of its citizens, including millions of descendents of slaves, feeling like they have a stake in it. In my opinion it is the statue shaggers who lack any coherent vision of the future - they want us to worship the past without understanding it, and celebrate who we were not who we are or who we could become.
The issue is that the statute destroyers went outside the democratic process. It had been discussed. The local population (IIRC) was divided but wanted to retain it. There was a compromise of a detailed plaque although the wording was challenging to reach a consensus on.
And then a group of people decided that the democratic process wasn’t important.
(As an aside, the way they have left it damaged and on its side in a museum is an interesting and thoughtful response.)
That's a very partial reading of the situation. The Colston culters were essentially blocking any plaque with an accurate account of what Colston had done, preventing a resolution of the issue for years. I would have preferred to see the issue resolved in a different way, but I think the eventual outcome - Colston in a museum, lying in his back with BLM written across his chest in red letters, is the ideal one. And the fact that he was thrown into the waters of one of Britain's largest slave ports along the way isn't something I'm going to get too upset about. I am much more concerned about violence against people than against inanimate objects - having a heavier sentence for damaging a statue than for rape, for instance, is insane.
The wording posted here last night which had apparently been proposed by the merchant venturers did t seem unreasonable to me. It highlighted his role in the RAC, the number of slaves, etc.
The wording was being blocked through - which is why things came to a head. The Colston culters wanted far less detail.
It was the mayor who kept vetoing the wording. The wording posted was from the Merchant Venturers (who I assume you are referring to as the “culters”)
The saga of the second plaque became a saga when the Merchant Venturers' own historian Francis Greenacre, a former curator of the Bristol Museum, objected to the wording of the plaque, which had been drafted by a project run by historians and school children.
I’m with @Charles on this. I don’t agree with mandatory vaccination for adults at all. Such a slippery slope. People seem to be unable to be rational and are acting out of blind fear.
Compulsory vaccination for children, sure, but not adults. The state shouldn’t be mandating what adults inject into their bodies.
How do you square compulsory vaccination for children (going against their parents permission) with different rules for Adults?
Just heard a report from Melbourne that Djokovic is claiming he has natural immunity to covid/omicron
Good luck with that
Is the natural immunity down to
- Taking lots of vitamin D - Goat de-worming pills - Hot broth - Jif in the hot broth - Taking lots of cold showers and rolling in the dirt to "exercise the immune system"
Or all of the above?
Surely hot broth would be enough for anyone? PACE PB, of 2020...
Time is running out for America. I see no sign of any acceptance of the urgency of the situation. Plenty of op-eds in NY Times warning about 2024, but nothing seems to happen.
Jan 6 was the start not the end and these people who think everything will be alright if Trump just has an actuarially unlikely heart attack are deluding themselves. He was just a moronic fucking boomer who stumbled on to something by accident.
The number one foreign policy goal of the British government should be to build strategic independence from the US against the day of its very ugly and chaotic disintegration.
What about the F-35 support, maintenance and software?
The Israelis operate their F-35 Adirs outside the ALIS/ODIN system and they are going to need all the friends they can get.
F135 engine maintenance and test is in the Netherlands and MRO&U is done in Italy.
The Iranians kept their F-14's flying for decades in the face of US sanctions. Although the F-14's are now rather long in the tooth, even with the limited upgrades they have done, they are better than nothing. And non-US countries have much larger technology and engineering capabilities than Iran, and have been intimately involved with the development of the F-35.
Certain aspects of its performance are yet to be bettered - it would pull 7G at M2.0!
We had a special (and very rigorous) procedure of disposing of end of life LRUs in the F-14 fleet just in case they mysteriously ended up at Bushehr
I’m with @Charles on this. I don’t agree with mandatory vaccination for adults at all. Such a slippery slope. People seem to be unable to be rational and are acting out of blind fear.
Compulsory vaccination for children, sure, but not adults. The state shouldn’t be mandating what adults inject into their bodies.
So would you have opposed he mandatory vaccination for small pox?
I’m with @Charles on this. I don’t agree with mandatory vaccination for adults at all. Such a slippery slope. People seem to be unable to be rational and are acting out of blind fear.
Compulsory vaccination for children, sure, but not adults. The state shouldn’t be mandating what adults inject into their bodies.
How do you square compulsory vaccination for children (going against their parents permission) with different rules for Adults?
Because we judge that often children do not know what is best for them. Especially when they’re very young.
Adults are adults.
Parents permission is irrelevant when the child’s welfare is at stake.
Just heard a report from Melbourne that Djokovic is claiming he has natural immunity to covid/omicron
Good luck with that
Is the natural immunity down to
- Taking lots of vitamin D - Goat de-worming pills - Hot broth - Jif in the hot broth - Taking lots of cold showers and rolling in the dirt to "exercise the immune system"
Or all of the above?
Arrogance ?
Discussing with Mrs. P this morning over a cup of tea in bed that Djokavic says he has a medical exemption and what condition that might be - she suggested he suffers from uphimselfitis.
I’m with @Charles on this. I don’t agree with mandatory vaccination for adults at all. Such a slippery slope. People seem to be unable to be rational and are acting out of blind fear.
Compulsory vaccination for children, sure, but not adults. The state shouldn’t be mandating what adults inject into their bodies.
So would you have opposed he mandatory vaccination for small pox?
That was for children, no? Therefore no I would not have opposed that.
I'm not saying they are stupid as was suggested. They are being gaslit on an epic scale by their media. But Biden DID win the election. Massively. Fairly. Demonstrably. That they still don't believe it is bonkers.
So I think the film got it pitch perfect. Here is something undeniably true. Just look at it. No, its a fake, don't look at it.
57% of Americans think a repeat attempted coup is likely to occur again. Perhaps the Canadian professor was right and the land of the Maple leaf needs to start preparing for refugees fleeing Gilead...
Trump may actually win the election fair and square and even win the popular vote in 2024.
Latest poll is Trump 44% Biden 38% with 8% of Biden 2020 voters now backing Trump
But all the polls show that both Biden and Trump are unpopular, and three quarters of Americans don't want another match between them.
By the way, the last line of the header has an unintentional double negative.
I didn't see any head to head numbers there and the Redfield poll was taken after that Yahoo poll. Note too even with Yahoo Trump has more support from Republicans than Biden does from Democrats
Isn't that because, after 5 years of Trump sucking the oxygen from the room, Republicanism essentially IS Trumpism? Yes, there is a Republican establishment tutting on the sidelines, but they are very isolated yesterday's men and women, and saying you are a Republican or registering as a Republican is very close to saying you're MAGA.
That just isn't true for Biden and the Democrats, and never will be as it isn't his style. He and his party have no interest at all in turning the Democrats into a Biden cult. There is criticism, of course, and often fairly strong criticism, when Joe Manchin or Kirsten Simena on one side, or AOC and her crew on the other fail to support the President. But they aren't, in fact, cast into the outer darkness. Biden doesn't vow to destroy them, hunt for slavishly loyal primary challengers, and whip up mobs against them. Similarly, it's not a very uncomfortable position to say "well, he's a bridge to 2024, but I'm not massively keen so let's talk about Harris or Buttigieg or whoever for 2024". So you can fairly comfortably identify as an AOC Democrat, or a blue dog Democrat, or just a Biden-sceptical Democrat - saying you're a Democrat doesn't suggest you're part of some kind of weird death cult for Joe.
I assume you are joking when you suggest that people are walking into restaurants and cinemas cheerfully infecting people. The seek to blame is very regrettable IMO. Infection isn't imprinted with details of the particular person you get the virus from and there is no nefarious intent here in any case.
The foe is the virus not its particular host.
The narrative that has developed is that vaccinated people are safe and unvaccinated are a danger. It is conveniently being forgotten that vaccinated people transmit too. Not sure what the latest science is on the relative transmissibility of the two groups.
The future we should be aiming for - fast - is one where we rub shoulders with everyone again, without firstly seeking to establish, demonise and avoid people for making a legal choice.
My understanding is that people who are vaccinated and boosted have a lower risk of catching the infection (even asymptomatically) and therefore a lower risk of passing it on. If that wasn't true, then I agree it would change the position and restrictions on anti-vaxxers would be unfair.
Otherwise, it should not be legal during a pandemic to refuse to protect yourself and simultaneously demand the right to infect others by entering crowded facilities. It's ultimate cakeism.
No one is demanding the right to infect others. Seriously?
By not being vaccinated you are. These people could be killers
I’m with @Charles on this. I don’t agree with mandatory vaccination for adults at all. Such a slippery slope. People seem to be unable to be rational and are acting out of blind fear.
Compulsory vaccination for children, sure, but not adults. The state shouldn’t be mandating what adults inject into their bodies.
Agreed. I might think differently if we were at 60% vaxxed rather than about 90% vaxxed, as the upside to the country would be very different.
What I would do is give everyone £100 vouchers per jab, also going back retrospectively, to be spent in travel or hospitality industries only valid at times when covid infection rates are not dangerously high (perhaps less than 1 in 50 in the ONS survey).
I assume you are joking when you suggest that people are walking into restaurants and cinemas cheerfully infecting people. The seek to blame is very regrettable IMO. Infection isn't imprinted with details of the particular person you get the virus from and there is no nefarious intent here in any case.
The foe is the virus not its particular host.
The narrative that has developed is that vaccinated people are safe and unvaccinated are a danger. It is conveniently being forgotten that vaccinated people transmit too. Not sure what the latest science is on the relative transmissibility of the two groups.
The future we should be aiming for - fast - is one where we rub shoulders with everyone again, without firstly seeking to establish, demonise and avoid people for making a legal choice.
My understanding is that people who are vaccinated and boosted have a lower risk of catching the infection (even asymptomatically) and therefore a lower risk of passing it on. If that wasn't true, then I agree it would change the position and restrictions on anti-vaxxers would be unfair.
Otherwise, it should not be legal during a pandemic to refuse to protect yourself and simultaneously demand the right to infect others by entering crowded facilities. It's ultimate cakeism.
No one is demanding the right to infect others. Seriously?
By not being vaccinated you are. These people could killers
Your liberties will not be determined by your actual vaccination status, they will be determined by government records.
As we know government records are never completely accurate or immune from manipulation by some future bad actor.
What would you do if the government said that you had not been vaccinated, when you had?
You can stop manipulation by blockchaining the records.
To @Sandpit and @TSE I'm sorry for suggesting blockchain to fix anything but it does have a purpose in making a record immutable without creating bigger issues.
Comments
Regular private PCR tests in person (stated offices so the witness doesn't visit you) would be my preferred approach.
But then again I've seen enough payroll software now to be biased towards - it's all hacksville (well utterly beyond that in most cases).
By coincidence one of my Christmas presents was Harris's Cicero trilogy. The similarities, with the gradual destruction of rules, standards and precedents that protected the republic from the strong men are stark.
The events you refer to were investigated and have been through the courts, due to the work of historians (possible in an open, progressive society like the UK with independent institutions), with significant amounts of comphensation being paid to the survivors, in 2013 - 9 years ago.
Even then, the repression of the Mau Maus is just one part of the very messy history of colonialism which, as I have said, the UK has ultimately rejected as a tool of development. Any historical appraisal of empire in Kenya or anywhere else would need to look at many, many other things. Otherwise you are just selecting events that reinforce the narrative that you like, which is the antithesis of the historians search for objectivity.
It is a peculiar feature of human nature that people seek to be concerned about what they can control, and feel helpless about what they cannot, the latter leading to denial. So it is with this. People feel that they can do something about the 'historic crimes of colonialism', but they know that they can do nothing about actual genocide and slavery going on now in certain parts of the world.
I force angry arguments at the local NCP carpark with badly parked tanks everywhere.
The number one foreign policy goal of the British government should be to build strategic independence from the US against the day of its very ugly and chaotic disintegration.
The NHS Providers guy quoted trusts modelling 130% hospitalisation vs the previous high, despite Omicron "just being a cold. Would be helpful if we actually recognised these facts and worked on supporting the NHS instead of denouncing the facts as ideologically inconvenient.
Pacific North West and NorCal is another
The rest is a third
Both are about power, and its abuse.
We really can't actually vaccinate people by force (soldiers breaking in and holding them down??). Making it mandatory (except for medical exemptions) with any number of restrictions on use of public and private property without evidence of vaccination would be legal. If someone wants to refuse vaccination without a medical reason but simply stays at home or goes for walks on their own, that's fine. But that is a vaxports policy, and I think the Government is simply too weak to get it through.
It appears that many of the ringleaders at the Capitol, who are clearly identifiable from photos and videos, haven’t been charged with any offences. Those who have been charged are, as you suggest, mostly the foot soldiers.
The suggestion is that the significant numbers of the ringleaders were either informers or FBI, which is apparently something with a rich history, in a country where entrapment laws don’t seem to apply as they do in the UK.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=KjtFUf_P4cE
A citizens’ rights are fundamental. The government does not have the right to strip those away lightly
When I attended a course (work provided) on... modern behaviour?... the lecturer included a section on Bad Facts.
These are things, which while true, are actually racist to bring up. Non-white involvement in the slave trade was a bullet point in the example list. Apparently only racists mention it to try and bring non-white people down.
Getting the right result by means of the wrong process is the wrong result. Process is important.
There is a statue in my home town of James Prescott Joule. If I decided I didn't like physics, what's to stop me pulling it down with the argument 'people have a right to decide who ought to be venerated in their home town'?
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/05/garland-rebuts-criticism-of-jan-6-probe-526551
I'm not entirely convinced by it.
Yet, this is presented as a one-sided issue. Guess what? The Democrats try to steal elections. It might not be a raging mob outside the Capitol but they use their soft power equivalent, which is the media telling us for years post-2016 that Trump was an illegitimate President and a Russian spy, and with Hillary saying even before 2020 that the election was stolen from her. Oh, and don't fucking mention Stacey Abrams who also gets away with still claiming she won the Georgia Governor election.
If you want to genuinely solve the problem, instead of virtual signalling, then you can start by recognising this is a two sided problem, not just one.
The foe is the virus not its particular host.
The narrative that has developed is that vaccinated people are safe and unvaccinated are a danger. It is conveniently being forgotten that vaccinated people transmit too. Not sure what the latest science is on the relative transmissibility of the two groups.
The future we should be aiming for - fast - is one where we rub shoulders with everyone again, without firstly seeking to establish, demonise and avoid people for making a legal choice.
Edit: In addition to the above, Omicron may very well mean that this pandemic becomes in the past without having to demonise people. Vaccination was always going to have refuseniks and in the end I suspect they will not matter. I predicted 15%-20% would refuse before vaccinations were developed. In the event it was much less. The promise of normality was not contingent on 100% take up - which would have been ridiculous.
F135 engine maintenance and test is in the Netherlands and MRO&U is done in Italy.
- He's anti vax
- His tame doctors built him a medical excuse to get around quarantine
- This was accepted on face value, initially, by the front-end types in Australia - partly because the medical justification would have been looked legit and partly because he was a high status visitor.
- He started taking the piss on social media
- This bumped it to the attention of the politicians who called the management types in immigration.
Afterwards we walked to a grave in a small graveyard that has an unusual Commonwealth gravestone in it - a young man who died in January 1919, after the war had ended. Presumably from wounds or the Spanish flu.
"The name of the Stolpersteine project invokes multiple allusions. In Nazi Germany, an antisemitic saying, when accidentally stumbling over a protruding stone, was: "A Jew must be buried here".[5][6] In a metaphorical sense, the German term Stolperstein can mean "potential problem".[7] The term "to stumble across something", in German and English, can also mean "to find out (by chance)".[8] Thus, the term provocatively invokes an antisemitic remark of the past, but at the same time intends to provoke thoughts about a serious issue. Stolpersteine are not placed prominently, but are rather discovered by chance, only recognizable when passing by at close distance. In contrast to central memorial places, which according to Demnig can be easily avoided or bypassed, Stolpersteine represent a much deeper intrusion of memory into everyday life.
Stolpersteine are placed right into the pavement. When Jewish cemeteries were destroyed throughout Nazi Germany, the gravestones were often repurposed as sidewalk paving stones. The desecration of the memory of the dead was implicitly intended, as people had to walk on the gravestones and tread on the inscriptions. The Stolpersteine provocatively hint at this act of desecration, as they lack any kind of defense against new acts of shame. While the art project thus intends to keep alive the memory, implying that improper acts could easily happen again, the intentional lack of defense against potential desecration also created criticism and concern. Some German cities like Munich still do not accept the setting of Stolpersteine, and look for alternative ways of commemoration instead.[9]"
Campaigning to have it removed is absolutely fine. What they won' be doing, I assume, is gathering a few mates and some bits and bobs and pulling it down themselves.
But the border guard person who stopped him original was - I assume - acting apolitically.
If a politician had intervened ahead of time to have a specific flag put on his passport then he might have a case
Lower healthcare priority would be the obvious starting point but the hippocratic oath stops that from working.
As you can't do that the next approach would be higher NI levels to reflect the additional risk - best approach but not a flick switch response (and has data privacy issues)
So you are left with other means of encouraging them to do their civic duty and stop being a walking petri dish time bomb and there aren't many of those.
Elsewhere won't actually have the problem we have, because elsewhere medical insurance rates could be changed to reflect the added risks and costs not being vaccinated creates.
That's probably why the Italian mandate is for those aged 50+, as I think there are medical insurance changes at around that age as well.
Now that could be because of a screwup by the Australian Open people or it could be because Novax team screwed up. We will just have to wait and see.
More interesting question is where will Novax being kept until Monday morning. That's going to be a long time in a small airport room if he isn't allowed to leave the airport and go landside.
At first sight, that seems odd. Why focus on the logistics (cruel and demonic as they were)? Well, because it allows the issue to be presented as an European sin. Many cultures have practiced slavery and, when it came to the African slave trade (a) Arabs were responsible for most of it and (b) it was African rulers who sold people of their skin colour over to the white man. So, you focus on slavery per se, you quickly realise many parties were involved. However, if you focus on the transportation aspect, it allows the problem to be presented as a European one.
Now, there are other factors. The abolitionists, for example, popularised the conditions in the slave ships and that led to outrage. Still, if the Europeans had not of conducted the trade, would the slaves have been released? The answer is No, because African rulers were selling their enemies - they would have been killed or sold to the Arabs.
Just heard a report from Melbourne that Djokovic is claiming he has natural immunity to covid/omicron
Good luck with that
Not sure how California (or are you just saying SF downwards?) would cope on its own as the only blue outpost west of Illinois.
Ps Kamski - I agree with your point on the plaques - it is awful for the AfD campaigning for them to be removed.
https://goo.gl/maps/jb4MdimAZpnKBJjv9
- Taking lots of vitamin D
- Goat de-worming pills
- Hot broth
- Jif in the hot broth
- Taking lots of cold showers and rolling in the dirt to "exercise the immune system"
Or all of the above?
You attack the logistics because that is where you get most bang for your anti slavery buck. As a slightly salient current parallel, you go after the procuring and transportation of children for purposes of abuse, harder than you go after the end users.
(News reports are he’s been sent to a quarantine hotel until the appeal has played out)
https://twitter.com/TanguiLeDantec/status/1476219700636000258
I suspect it's because he didn't treat everyone equally (as was the way then) but he lived in a different world and big bang approaches don't (or incredibly rarely) work. Everything has to be done in baby steps especially the early days.
At some point Emily Davison will be being attacked on animal cruelty grounds.
Otherwise, it should not be legal during a pandemic to refuse to protect yourself and simultaneously demand the right to infect others by entering crowded facilities. It's ultimate cakeism.
For most of history, slaves have been of the same race as slave owners, for obvious reasons - those of different races were too far away.
But the slavery we are most familiar with was made easier for contemporaries to justify by its victims being of a different race - easier to view as 'not really human'. That said, IIRC, the main taboo was on Christians enslaving non-Christians - so perhaps being of a different religion was more important (and a 'primitive' religion too - other monotheists were afforded rather more respect).
A nuance which is seldom discussed is that my understanding is that the British did little or no capturing of Africans for slavery - they were bought from other Africans (presumably losers in local wars?) That makes the British part in it only mildly less abhorrent, yes - but the role of how the slaves were enslaved in the first place is rarely discussed (and I certainly don't have any sort of handle on it).
So essentially your argument is that slavery is not wrong, it's only if it is practiced by Christians that it is. SO, totally fine for Muslims, Hindus etc to do it?
In that case then, I assume you also think it is not wrong for gay people to be killed in the Middle East because, eh, they are Muslim and they have a different way of doing things.
Ps getting all Godwin. The Nazis weren't Christian either, they were essentially Pagans. Guess we have to revisit what they did in the light of their beliefs.
They (and their friends) picked this up on their own - via TikTok and the like.
It is interesting how they have a category for "normal" and.... "cancelled" and that's it. Good/Bad is much easier when you are a teenager.
The problem with both men is that before they had Covid, they were saying they just need to be fit and take their vitamins and they’d be fine, no need to get vaccinated and potentially screw themselves up.
Washing & Oregon plus California coast down to LA would be in the “pacific north west” country. Rather than a Pakistan/East Pakistan structure seemed simpler to separate from day 1.
SoCal is fairly red - Long Beach down to San Diego and across the Inland Empire to Arizona and NM.
Your liberties will not be determined by your actual vaccination status, they will be determined by government records.
As we know government records are never completely accurate or immune from manipulation by some future bad actor.
What would you do if the government said that you had not been vaccinated, when you had?
Compulsory vaccination for children, sure, but not adults. The state shouldn’t be mandating what adults inject into their bodies.
From https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/society-merchant-venturers-admit-inappropriate-4222735
The saga of the second plaque became a saga when the Merchant Venturers' own historian Francis Greenacre, a former curator of the Bristol Museum, objected to the wording of the plaque, which had been drafted by a project run by historians and school children.
We had a special (and very rigorous) procedure of disposing of end of life LRUs in the F-14 fleet just in case they mysteriously ended up at Bushehr
Adults are adults.
Parents permission is irrelevant when the child’s welfare is at stake.
That just isn't true for Biden and the Democrats, and never will be as it isn't his style. He and his party have no interest at all in turning the Democrats into a Biden cult. There is criticism, of course, and often fairly strong criticism, when Joe Manchin or Kirsten Simena on one side, or AOC and her crew on the other fail to support the President. But they aren't, in fact, cast into the outer darkness. Biden doesn't vow to destroy them, hunt for slavishly loyal primary challengers, and whip up mobs against them. Similarly, it's not a very uncomfortable position to say "well, he's a bridge to 2024, but I'm not massively keen so let's talk about Harris or Buttigieg or whoever for 2024". So you can fairly comfortably identify as an AOC Democrat, or a blue dog Democrat, or just a Biden-sceptical Democrat - saying you're a Democrat doesn't suggest you're part of some kind of weird death cult for Joe.
What I would do is give everyone £100 vouchers per jab, also going back retrospectively, to be spent in travel or hospitality industries only valid at times when covid infection rates are not dangerously high (perhaps less than 1 in 50 in the ONS survey).
To @Sandpit and @TSE I'm sorry for suggesting blockchain to fix anything but it does have a purpose in making a record immutable without creating bigger issues.